Gang-death sentences handed out

LAKE CHARLES, La. — A leader and a member of a prison-based whites-only gang have been sentenced for being accessories-after-the-fact to a murder.

U.S. Attorney David Joseph said in a news release that David Wayne Williams, 38, of Sulphur, La., was sentenced Tuesday to 157 months in prison, while Richard Alan Smith, 47, of Little Rock got 150 months.

Williams pleaded guilty to the accessory charge in the slaying of Clifton Hallmark, another Aryan Circle member, as well as drug trafficking and weapons possession.

Smith pleaded guilty in July to the accessory charge.

He was among eight people — which included men from Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma — indicted in March. Smith was the only one from Arkansas, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division and the U.S. attorney’s office of the Western District of Louisiana.

Prosecutors said Williams and Smith were both at a meeting where Hallmark was shot after a fight broke out in Turkey Creek, La., in 2016.

The Aryan Circle was founded around 1985 within the Texas prison system, with members engaged in drug and firearms trafficking, killings, robbery, kidnapping and other crimes, according to the indictment.

The gang’s influence expanded to other rural and suburban areas in Texas and other states, including Louisiana and Missouri, and members often had tattoos incorporating Nazi-style symbols, the indictment said.

The U.S. attorney’s office said in its indictments that the group enforced its rules and promoted discipline among its members, prospects and associates through murder, attempted murder, assault, robbery and threats against those who violated the rules or posed a threat to the organization.