LR man guilty in gang killing
2 others in Shreveport supremacist group also took deals
A Little Rock man is one of three people who have pleaded guilty to being accessories-after-the-fact in the 2016 racketeering-related slaying of a Shreveport white-supremacist gang member, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
Richard Alan Smith, 47, pleaded guilty July 25 in the shooting death of Clifton Hallmark, who authorities said was a fellow member of the Aryan Circle gang. Hallmark, 51, was found with a gunshot wound in the head on July 1, 2016, near a grocery store in Evangeline Parish, according to The Advocate, a Louisiana newspaper.
In March, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Western District of Louisiana announced that Smith and seven other suspected members of the Aryan Circle, a white-supremacist prison gang, had been indicted in Hallmark’s killing. The others were from Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma.
Prosecutors say the Aryan Circle is a “powerful racebased, multi-state organization that operates inside and outside of state and federal prisons throughout Texas, Louisiana and the United States.”
In March, Louisiana authorities said the gang’s structure and influence had recently expanded “to rural and suburban areas throughout Texas, Louisiana and Missouri.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, Assistant Attorney General Bryan Benczkowski of the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney David Joseph of the Western District of Louisiana announced that a senior leader of the gang, David Wayne Williams, 38, of Sulphur, La., and a subordinate gang member, Leland Hamm, 43, of Tulsa, had pleaded guilty Tuesday and Wednesday to being accessories-after-the-fact in the killing. They also announced that Smith had pleaded guilty on July 25.
The news release said the Aryan Circle was established in the mid-1980s in the Texas prison system. In noting the gang’s recent expansion, the officials said the gang “emerged as an independent organization during a period of turmoil within the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.”
They said the Aryan Circle was “relatively small in comparison to other prison-based gangs, but grew in stature and influence within the [Texas prison system] in the 1990s, largely through violent conflict with other gangs, white and non-white alike.”
The recent plea agreements say that the gang enforces its rules and promotes discipline among its members, prospects and associates through murder, attempted murder, assault, robbery and threats against those who violate the rules or pose a threat to the organization. The news release said that members, and sometimes associates, are required to follow the rules of higher-ranking members “without question.”
Sentencing for Smith is scheduled for Nov. 20, while Williams and Hamm are scheduled for sentencing Nov. 20 and Dec. 13, respectively, before U.S. District Judge Dree D. Drell.