Colombian Drug King Sentenced to Two Life Terms Plus 150 Years

Colombian drug kingpin Carlos Lehder, convicted of leading the Medellin Cartel that smuggled billions of dollars of cocaine into the United States, was sentenced today to two consecutive life terms plus 150 years in prison and $425,000 in fines.

Earlier in the day, a co-defendant, Jack Carlton Reed, 59, was given the maximum term of 15 years for his conviction on one count of conspiring with Lehder. He was also fined $15,000 by U.S. District Judge Howell Melton.

Reed’s hearing lasted nearly two hours before Melton issued the sentence and moved on to Lehder’s hearing.

The conviction May 19 of Lehder, 38, was hailed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III as one of the nation’s biggest victories in the war on drugs.

It took more than 43 hours of deliberation by a jury of eight women and four men to reach the guilty verdict in the seven-month trial.

The day after the verdict, the jury voted to allow the government to confiscate property on a remote island in the Bahamas that prosecutors said Lehder used to transport tons of cocaine into the nation.

To Avert Takeover

Prosecutors had argued the property must be seized to prevent others from taking over the smuggling operation.

Lehder’s six companies and property in Norman’s Cay, a small island about 40 miles southeast of Nassau, was the headquarters of his operation, they said.

Recommended for confiscation were the companies and about half the island, including two houses on the island and a condominium in Nassau. Officials did not comment on the value of the property.

The Bahamas government has protested the possible seizure of the island, but former U.S. Atty. Robert Merkle, Lehder’s prosecutor and now a Republican candidate in Florida’s U.S. Senate race, had argued it is not a Bahamian island, but Lehder’s personal property.

Medellin Chieftain

Lehder was one of the chiefs of the Medellin Cartel, named for the Colombian city known for its cocaine trade. The Washington Post today reported that Lehder and the other Medellin leaders proposed two years ago to abandon the drug trade and provide the United States with intelligence about leftist guerrillas in Colombia in exchange for amnesty from prosecution.

Lehder was captured after a shootout at his Colombian ranch on Feb. 4, 1987, and he became the first Colombian extradited under a controversial U.S.-Colombian treaty.

Lehder was convicted of smuggling 3.3 tons of cocaine into the United States between 1979 and 1980 and a witness testified that Lehder once used his mother as a cross-country drug runner. A federal prosecutor said his operation was so slick that he was the Henry Ford of the cocaine world.

Lehder served a term in a federal prison on marijuana charges in the mid-1970s. It was during that sentence that he began plotting his cocaine network.