Largest U.S. death penalty case ends

[SoulTrainOz]

32 murders alleged in racketeering case against prison gang

In Santa Ana, federal prosecutors said Tuesday the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood maintained its reputation as one of America's most notorious prison gangs by murdering rivals and its own members who violated gang rules.

During closing arguments in the trial of 4 suspected gang ringleaders, Assistant U.S. Attorney Terri Flynn said the group was ruthless and relentless in running a criminal operation in prison and on the streets.

"The Aryan Brotherhood is a violent, murderous prison gang," Flynn said. "They killed all those who threatened the criminal enterprise."

On trial are Barry "The Baron" Mills, Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham, Edgar "The Snail" Hevle and Christopher Overton Gibson. They are accused of orchestrating 32 murders and attempted murders involving the gang that was founded in 1964 at California's San Quentin prison.

Racketeering alleged

The government is pursuing the case under a federal racketeering law originally passed to target organized crime.

It is believed to be one of the largest death penalty cases in U.S.
history. Of the 40 people originally arrested, up to 16 could face the death penalty in several trials.

Closing arguments by both sides in the case were expected to last until Friday.

On Tuesday, prosecutors showed jurors written messages from gang members and photos of people they contend were killed at the behest of gang leaders.

Flynn said the gang recruited the most violent inmates at high-security prisons who would protect the gang at any cost.

"Even its own members weren't safe," she said.

During the trial, which began 4 months ago, prosecutors called to the witness stand convicted killers, former gang members and jailhouse informants who testified about the violent tactics of the gang.

Defense lawyers countered that the aging defendants were forced to join the gang simply to survive in the tough prison environment. Testimony against them was manufactured and paid for with money and prison privileges, according to the defense.

Flynn denied those accusations.

"We need cooperators to infiltrate a gang like this," she said.

Ex-gang members testify

Nearly all of the witnesses have been former members of the Aryan Brotherhood. Their gruesome testimony revealed the dark world of prison life and gang membership.

Jurors heard accounts of dozens of murders and attempted murders, including one in which the attacker licked the dead man's blood from his hands while laughing hysterically.

The trial also provided a look at gang practices of sending messages in invisible ink made from urine and using runners to smuggle knives and drugs in their rectums or genitals when they visited.

Federal prosecutors say Mills and Bingham ordered a 1997 race war at a prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, that led to the deaths of 2 black inmates.

Defense attorneys countered with the testimony of 2 black prison gang members who said the Aryan Brotherhood was too small and weak to attack a rival black gang behind bars and incite a race war.

The trial stemmed from a 6-year investigation that culminated with arrests in 2002. Nineteen suspects struck plea bargains and 1 died. 2 more trials are scheduled for this fall in Los Angeles.

(source: Associated Press)

[SoulTrainOz]

Jury starts deliberations wondering whom to trust in the racketeering and murder drama after a parade of career criminals testifies.

By Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times

The government called to the stand cutthroats and con men, prolific killers and proud lifelong outlaws. They raised their hands and swore to tell the truth.

One claimed he robbed banks to protest the plight of American Indians. One said he plunged a knife through a friend's throat. One spoke of subduing a drug-addled enemy so he could be strangled with a braided bedsheet. One lost count of the men he had murdered.

For much of the five past months, jurors in the murder and racketeering trial against the Aryan Brotherhood have watched a bizarre, blood-curdling pageant of career criminals take the witness box at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana to testify against what prosecutors call one of the nation's most ruthless prison gangs.

As portrayed by more than two dozen Brotherhood defectors and former associates, the gang was so fearsome, so quick to kill, that with just a few dozen members it controlled drug and gambling rackets in prisons nationwide. Over and over, witnesses pointed to the two graying men with the bald heads
and biker mustaches chained in the first row of the defendants' dock, Barry "The Baron" Mills and T.D. "The Hulk" Bingham, as its masterminds.

Friday afternoon, as jurors began deliberating the fates of Mills, Bingham and two other alleged Brotherhood leaders, they must decide: How far can the witnesses be trusted?

"The government has to use cooperators to infiltrate a prison gang such as this," prosecutor Terri K. Flynn told jurors. Acknowledging some witnesses had long records, she said, "That is the exact type of person that the Aryan Brotherhood wanted as a member."

But in closing arguments this week, defense attorneys hammered away at the credibility of what they called "snitches" and "snakes," saying witnesses had ample reason to lie and, with access to court documents in the case, the opportunity to synchronize their fabrications. In many instances, defense
lawyers argued, the government paid them thousands of dollars for their testimony, and dangled sweet legal deals to ensure it.

"Inmates lie and lie and lie," said Mark F. Fleming, Mills' attorney.
"They're asking you to place your trust in this collection of thieves and liars and perjurers in order to get a single conviction."

The case, which involves 17 murders or attempted murders, rests not merely on the word of informers, prosecutors countered, but on a trove of documents seized from the gang. Among them: a gang membership roster naming the defendants, reading lists and elaborately coded messages.

Perhaps most d**ningly, prosecutors have produced a "mission statement" - a single-spaced, typewritten page allegedly found in the Marion, Ill., prison cell of a Brotherhood leader - outlining the gang's structure and goals. The statement divides the gang into commissioners, council members, businessmen and enforcers. It lays out the Brotherhood oath: "I pledge my mind, heart and life to the A.B." And it calls for the transformation of the gang from a bunch of "broke dysfunctional jailhouse bullies" into "the very best possible criminal organization."

Defense attorney Kenneth Reed suggested that the Bureau of Prisons planted the document, and argued that a "dysfunctional prison gang" with leaders who were "long in the tooth" did not qualify as a criminal enterprise under federal racketeering laws.

The trial against Mills, Bingham, and alleged lesser Brotherhood leaders Edgar "The Snail" Hevle and Christopher Gibson took place on the ninth floor of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Santa Ana, in a courtroom outfitted with Nuremberg-like docks for the defendants, who are chained to the floor, and a witness box where inmate cooperators could also be shackled. Federal
marshals, brought in from across the country, surrounded the inmates through the trial.

Jurors, whose identities have been kept secret, are expected to resume deliberations Monday.

If convicted, Hevle and Gibson face life in prison, while Mills and Bingham are eligible for the death penalty. All four are already serving long prison terms. If acquitted, Bingham is set to be released in 2010.

The case began with Mills slaying an inmate in an Atlanta prison in 1979 for stealing drugs from a Brotherhood member, a crime for which Mills was convicted in 1981 and is serving a life sentence. Now, prosecutors are charging the same murder as a racketeering act, though Mills' attorney claims another inmate did it.

Prosecutors say the gang's violence culminated in a "race war" that left two black inmates dead at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., in 1997. Called to the stand by the government, Al Benton, who said he was the prison's highest-ranking Brotherhood member at the time, testified that he plunged a
shiv into the throat of a black inmate he considered a friend.

Benton said he received a smuggled message from Bingham, who was being held at the Supermax in Florence, Colo., ordering him to wage war on blacks. The defense acknowledges that Bingham got a message to Benton, but maintains it was merely a warning to be on guard in an increasingly hostile racial climate.

The defense argued that Benton, whose eyes filled with tears when he discussed his friendship with Mills, decided to inform on the gang he loved because he would otherwise face the death penalty or life in shackled isolation for the Lewisburg murder. Instead, he was allowed to plead to an assault charge and received a nine-year sentence.

Prosecutors said the gang had just 100 members but could depend on legions of "associates" to do its bidding. But defense attorney Fleming ridiculed the government's portrayal of the "all-reaching, all-knowing Aryan Brotherhood," and said it was "ludicrous" that a gang comprising "one-tenth of 1% of the prison population" could wage war against enemies that vastly
outnumbered it.

With access to each other and to court documents, Fleming argued, gang defectors were able to cobble together stories in exchange for money and reduced prison time.

"Some of these folks haven't stepped on a blade of grass in 10, 15 years," Fleming said.

Source : Los Angeles Times

www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-aryan15jul15,1,451

[SoulTrainOz]

of White Prison Gang

New York TimesMurder Trial Yields Sharply Conflicting Portrayals of White Prison Gang

A sweeping federal murder and racketeering case against the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang ended Thursday, after a week of closing arguments that offered radically different portrayals of what life behind bars is like for gang members and those who cross them.

To hear the prosecutor tell it, the Brotherhood is a bloody organization that exacts its will through murder and mayhem in prisons across the nation. Its strict system of bylaws offers no room for error.

"The Aryan Brotherhood will take out anyone and anything that gets in its way of operating a criminal enterprise," an assistant United States attorney, Terri Flynn, told the jury of four women and eight men whose identities have not been made public. "The A.B. used murder as discipline. They used murder to keep their members in line."

Defense lawyers claimed otherwise, insisting that members belonged not to a murderous cadre but to a social entity that enjoys reading and playing cards. One defense lawyer, Kenneth Reed, called them a "dysfunctional'' group of "brothers" banded together for survival in the nation's hellish prison system.

"This is not an enterprise,'' Mr. Reed said. "It just flat isn't."

The trial in the federal courthouse here was the first in a series growing out of a 2002 indictment of 40 members of the gang, which was formed in the mid-1960's by white inmates in the racially divided California prison system. The 141-page indictment was a road map detailing a systematic enterprise of murder, gambling, extortion and narcotics trafficking both behind prison walls and on the streets.

The defendants are 4 senior members of the brotherhood, including 2 if its early leaders, Barry B. Mills, 57, known as "The Baron,'' and Tyler D. Bingham, 58, who goes by "The Hulk.'' The other two defendants are Christopher O. Gibson, 46, and Edgar W. Hevle, 54, known as "The Snail.''

The 4 are charged with participating in 15 murders or attempted murders under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization laws, which have been used to prosecute Mafia families and other criminal groups. Federal prosecutors called the case against the Aryan Brotherhood, the result of four years of investigation, the largest death penalty case in the nation's history.

For 4 months, jurors heard dozens of informants who had been recruited by prosecutors routinely discuss stabbings and beatings with the same detachment as if they were ordering lunch. They testified about how the defendants either ordered the killings or personally committed them. Some informants were top members of the Brotherhood hierarchy.

The 1st witness was Clifford Smith, a convicted murderer and former Brotherhood member who admitted on cross examination that he had lied while testifying in the brotherhood case as well as in 2 previous unrelated murder cases.

A lawyer for Mr. Mills, Mark Fleming, nicknamed Mr. Smith the "professor of perjury."

On Thursday, Mr. Hevle's lawyer, Douglas Calabria, tried to discredit Mr. Smith by telling the jury: "This is a man who casually told you of the eight or nine murders he committed and it turned out to be 21."

Defense lawyers also brought up other problems with the informants, including one witness who, Mr. Fleming said, had received a total of $153,000 from the government for things like education and was placed in the witness protection program.

"This amounts to a sanctioned jail break with the help and assistance of the government," Mr. Fleming told jurors. "These people are escaping from prison in a way they never thought possible."

Many former Brotherhood members aided the government's case from a special cellblock inside a federal "supermaximum" prison in Colorado said to be the most secure facility in the nation.

While there, according to testimony from informants, they provided the government with intelligence and broke codes in letters that Brotherhood members sent to one another.

Ms. Flynn, the chief federal prosecutor, told the jurors that the
witnesses and documents seized from jail cells over the years corroborated the defendants' deadly acts.

She waved one such document in front of jurors - a typewritten page titled "Mission Statement" that read, "This is about us becoming the very best possible criminal organization."

Other items included a membership roster, the Aryan Brotherhood oath, a collection of books titled "Areas of Study" and the Aryan Brotherhood Code of Conduct. The code listed 10 items including a death sanction for violating rules.

While conceding that life behind bars was often violent, Ms. Flynn said most prisoners lived by a different set of rules than the Brotherhood.

"If you cross another inmate, they're just going to beat you up,'' she argued on Tuesday. "The Aryan Brotherhood is going to kill you."

Jury deliberations are set to begin Friday. If convicted, Mr. Mills and Mr. Bingham face the death penalty, Mr. Hevle and Mr. Gibson face life in prison.

19 of the remaining defendants named in the indictment have pleaded guilty, and one died in custody. The rest are awaiting trial.

(source: New York Times)

[SoulTrainOz]

prison murders

A white supremacist prison gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood maintains its grip on gambling and drug trafficking both inside and outside the walls of America's penitentiaries, by murdering anyone who gets in its way or dares to cross its leadership, a US prosecutor told a jury this week.

Details of the gang's modus operandi, which included smuggling weapons concealed in genitals and sending messages between prisons with disappearing ink made from urine, were disclosed in closing arguments at a trial of 4 alleged leaders of the gang in Santa Ana, California.

It is the 1st of several trials expected in the wake of a federal
investigation into the gang that ended in 2002. 40 men were arrested at that time, of whom 16 could face the death penalty, making it one of the biggest capital punishment cases to reach the American courts. Prosecutors allege that over a period of 32 years, the gang was responsible for 30 murders. In the dock in Santa Ana are the now middle-aged men, who prosecutors say were among the most important leaders of the Brotherhood.
They are Barry "the Baron" Mills, Tyler "the Hulk" Bingham, Edgar "the Snail" Hevle and Christopher Overton Gibson. After 4 months of testimony, the case could go to the jury at the end of this week.

"These men ran the Aryan Brotherhood," the US District Attorney Terri Flynn said in closing arguments this week. "They imposed murder when necessary to keep the goals of the Aryan Brotherhood operating as they should."

Experts say that the gang was founded in the late 1950s at the San Quentin penitentiary in California, when white inmates banded together to protect themselves against blacks and Hispanics, who outnumbered them. In the mid-1960s, the group named itself the Aryan Brotherhood, thus formalising its espousal of racism and white supremacy. Its chilling and self-explanatory motto reads: "Kill to get in; die to get out."

Prosecutors have painted a picture of a gang that quickly moved beyond self-protection to the aggressive pursuit of criminal enterprises inside prisons around the country as well as on the outside. Its leaders recruited the most violent inmates to help boost the gang's strength. Murder was the tool used to ensure loyalty and punish betrayal. "Even its own members weren't safe," said Ms Flynn. Mark Potok, an expert on gangs at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, said that over time criminal profit
became more important than racism. "The Aryan Brotherhood is very active in the production and distribution of drugs, especially methamphetamine," he said. Members committed other crimes, including theft, assault and murder.

Gang members released from prison are expected to continue working for the organisation, ensuring that the gangs criminal activities spread far beyond the prison system. Duties are likely to include supplying drugs to comrades still behind bars.

"It is a hard fact that most of the AB will be paroled or discharged at some future date, and in view of members lifelong commitments, it would be nave to think [any gang member] would not remain in contact with his brothers, concluded an FBI report on the gang from 1982, released under Freedom of Information laws. "The rule of thumb is that, once on the streets, one must take care of his brothers that are still inside. The
penalty for failure to do so is death upon the members return to the prison system."

Jurors in Santa Ana heard how the four defendants sent messages to gang members in other prisons using the urine-manufactured disappearing ink and used runners usually the girlfriends of inmates to bring weapons to the prison, concealed in the anus or girl thingy. Prosecutors showed membership lists and a code of conduct making it clear that every member should
generate income from criminal activities.

In her closing arguments, Ms Flynn also spent several hours describing in detail five of the alleged murders. In one case, she said, the assailant stabbed the dying victim so many times and so violently that his knife left scratch marks on the ground beneath him. When he was done he licked the victims blood from his hands. The court also watched 5 prison surveillance videos showing some of the alleged murders being committed.

At the core of Ms Flynn's case has been the assertion that a message sent by two of the men on trial Barry Mills and Tyler Bingham to fellow gang members at a prison in Pennsylvania in 1997, contained an order to start a race war. Riots that immediately broke out in the prison resulted in the deaths of 2 black inmates.

(source: Daily (UK) Telegraph)