Aryan Inmate Capital Trials to Start
Informants are plentiful as the biggest death penalty case on record
seeks to break the prison gang in the same way the Mafia was decades
ago.
By William Lobdell and Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writers
Armed with a shank, Barry "The Baron" Mills, the kingpin of the
Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, nearly decapitated an inmate in a
bathroom stall for hoarding drugs.
Edgar "The Snail" Hevle, a trusted lieutenant in the Brotherhood,
allegedly arranged for the murder of a prisoner who threw a packet
of sugar at him, a slight he apparently considered worthy of a
violent death.
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And Tommy "Terrible Tom" Silverstein, who had earned his stripes by
killing three inmates, escaped from his shackles on the way back
from the prison showers and killed a guard by stabbing him 20 times.
Acts of brutality and callous retribution among the ranks of the
nation's most hardened criminals provide the bedrock of the largest
capital case filed in U.S. history, against Aryan Brotherhood
leaders, which will begin to unfold in courtrooms in Los Angeles and
Santa Ana in the coming weeks.
At least eight convicts, some already serving life sentences and
doomed to spend their days in solitary confinement, may get the
death penalty if convicted of murder in the upcoming federal
racketeering trials. Prosecutors are still deciding whether to seek
the death penalty for eight others.
With the aim of winning capital sentences for crimes committed in
prison, the case — which involves 32 counts of murder and attempted
murder — is designed to dismantle the Aryan Brotherhood in much the
same way the feds took apart the mob decades ago.
Beyond eliminating key gang leaders by putting them on death row,
prosecutors hope the sheer number of gang members they have been
able to turn into informants will cripple the Brotherhood.
In a prison note intercepted by authorities, Mills said any
Brotherhood defectors should be wiped off "the face of the Earth!"
"It's likely necessary for us to step-up and conduct a thorough
evaluation of every brother's personal character and level of
commitment, as we currently possess some serious rot that is in fact
potentially a cancer!" he wrote in the note.
Defense attorneys said the government's case was flawed, resting on
the premise that inmates locked in solitary confinement can operate
an elaborate interstate criminal enterprise and that prison snitches
are reliable sources.
Attorneys for the inmates are seeking to suppress the testimony of a
group of informants they say were housed together at a "supermax"
federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo. The defense says "the
snitches" were coached by prosecutors and provided with information
so they could be convincing on the witness stand.
To win such testimony, defense attorneys say, informants were bribed
with pornographic magazines, restaurant meals, Nike shoes, video
game players and, in one case, a sexual rendezvous.
Mills' attorney said the suggestion that his client could
orchestrate the murders of inmates in Pennsylvania while he was
serving time in the Colorado "supermax" is absurd.
The federal courtroom in Santa Ana where four of the inmates are
going on trial, including leaders Mills and T.D. "The Hulk" Bingham,
is heavily fortified. There's an extra metal detector, a small army
of plainclothes U.S. marshals and a specially constructed
defendants' table, designed so jurors can't see that the inmates are
chained to the floor.
There have been several instances of courtroom violence involving
Brotherhood gang members, including a trial during which an inmate
stabbed his attorney four times.
Security is such a concern that U.S. District Judge David O. Carter
said that if one of the defense witnesses — "Terrible Tom"
Silverstein, the Aryan Brotherhood leader who murdered the prison
guard — appeared in his Santa Ana courtroom, he would be bound in
restraints similar to those for Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in
the movie "Silence of the Lambs."
Federal prosecutors allege that the leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood
orchestrated dozens of hits over two decades inside and outside
maximum-security prisons across the country, using a three-man
commission that would approve the slayings. An additional four
defendants will be on trial but will not face the death penalty.
"We live in a mean, ugly world," said one of the gang's top leaders,
Michael Patrick "Big Mac" McElhiney, at his 1994 federal trial for
trafficking heroin in prison. He's targeted for the death penalty in
the coming trial, after a number of prison killings. "We try to
aspire to be better, but not according to your value system. That's
why we're in prison. We don't obey your laws. We don't agree with
them. We make our own laws."
Prosecutors contend that for years, despite being locked in their
cells for 23 hours a day and isolated from other prisoners,
Brotherhood leaders engaged in a Mafia-style operation of drug
trafficking, extortion and approved hits.
Orders would be given in creative ways: tapping out Morse code on
the prison floors and walls, shouting ancient Aztec words that
Brotherhood members would understand and heed, and using family and
friends to pass along demands. Prosecutors say the Aryans also used
coded notes, some written in urine that acted like invisible ink.
For face-to-face meetings, the inmates — serving as their own
attorneys for prison crimes — would subpoena their associates.
In 2004, in a trial that served as a precursor to the current ones,
a federal jury deadlocked on whether to convict an Aryan Brotherhood
leader, David Sahakian, and two associates on murder and conspiracy
charges in the 1999 death of a black inmate in the federal prison in
Marion, Ill.
In all, 20 defendants will be tried in three courtrooms. Forty were
originally charged; 19 reached plea bargains and one has died.
U.S. District Judge George H. King in Los Angeles will preside over
a trial involving 11 defendants, scheduled to begin this month.
Before another Los Angeles federal judge, five more defendants are
expected to be tried in October.
But in what promises to be the case's main attraction, the
Brotherhood's two kingpins, Mills and No. 2 man Bingham, are
scheduled to go on trial Feb. 27 in Santa Ana. Together, prosecutors
say, the pair are responsible for sanctioning most of the 32 murders
and attempted murders listed in the indictment. The death penalty
counts for Mills and Bingham stem from the murders of two black
inmates in a prison in Lewisburg, Pa.
They will be tried along with Edgar "The Snail" Hevle and
Christopher O. Gibson, two associates accused of murder and
attempted murder. Prospective jurors have been told the trial could
take nine months.
During jury selection now underway, Bingham hardly looked like a
prison superthug. Dressed in a new button-down shirt and slacks and
wearing wire-rimmed glasses, he had an avuncular appearance. He
often stroked his walrus mustache, traded jokes with one of his
attorneys and nodded politely when introduced to a prospective juror
across the courtroom.
Only the bulk beneath his shirt hinted at Bingham's history as one
of the most feared men in the U.S. federal prison system. Having
reportedly once bench-pressed 500 pounds, he has a Star of David on
one arm, to reflect his Jewish heritage, and a swastika on the
other.
Mills' appearance was professorial. He wore a gray button-down
shirt, slacks and tortoiseshell glasses that slipped down the bridge
of his nose. His shaved head gleamed from the court lights. He, too,
nodded politely at each potential juror.
He didn't look like the boss of America's most feared prison gang,
which once approved the killing of an inmate who bumped a
Brotherhood member during a basketball game. The guilty party was
stabbed 71 times and had his eyes gouged out.
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In 1964, a group of white inmates in San Quentin began to organize
in the prison yard, forming a group to protect themselves against a
black militant gang. They eventually merged with other white gangs
and called themselves the Aryan Brotherhood, also known in prison
vernacular as the Brand.
They marked themselves with identifying tattoos: a shamrock in
tribute to the Irish heritage of many members, swastikas and "666,"
the biblical sign of Satan.
Membership requirements were simple: "Blood in, blood out." Inmates
had to kill someone to join the Aryan Brotherhood, and death was the
only way out. When one Aryan brother received protection from prison
officials in exchange for his testimony, gang leaders ordered a hit
on the informant's father.
Government reports and court documents track the Brotherhood's
evolution:
As the gang flourished and spread to other prisons, its leaders
decided they needed a summit to formalize the structure of the
growing Aryan Brotherhood. They met at the California Institute for
Men in Chino, summoned there by subpoenas wielded by member inmates
charged with prison crimes and acting as their own attorneys.
For more than a year in the early '80s, Brotherhood leaders met
daily in the prison yard to hammer out their business model for
running drugs and regulating violence. They opted for a tiered
government structure, with a three-man commission that had to
approve any murder or assault on a Brand member. But snitches could
be killed without approval.
They also relaxed the "Blood in" rule, conceding that they needed
different kinds of talent to run their operation. Authorities said
the Aryan Brotherhood began to recruit explosives experts, chemists,
people with legal backgrounds and those who would be able to run
scams inside and outside the prison.
In 1997, U.S. Atty. Greg Jessner, who had successfully prosecuted
one Aryan Brotherhood murder case, launched an investigation
designed to use racketeering laws to take out the leadership of the
Brand.
In recent years, federal prosecutors have used racketeering statues
to successfully prosecute members of several prison gangs, including
29 members of the Aryan Circle in Texas and 10 members of the Nazi
Low Riders in California.
The investigation by Jessner, working with the FBI, prison officials
and what was then named the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
resulted in a 110-page federal grand jury indictment that led to the
arrest in 2002 of 40 alleged leaders of the Brand and their
associates.
It's unclear how badly damaged the Aryan Brotherhood will be if the
government wins the case. Prison experts say the leadership vacuum
will be quietly filled with other inmates, though they will be less
experienced.
"In some respects, it's more an issue of justice than wiping out the
Aryan Brotherhood," said Mark Pitcavage, director of fact-finding
for the Anti-Defamation League and an expert on prison gangs.
Jessner, who has now opened his family law practice and won't be
prosecuting the case, said he didn't know what effect a successful
prosecution would have on the Brand. But he did know one thing: "If
Mills gets the death penalty and gets put to death, that will deter
him."