Aryan Brotherhood RICO case drags on as frustration rises on both sides
SACRAMENTO >> Until recently, this month would have marked the beginning of a major racketeering trial involving five prison homicides and four alleged murder conspiracies that prosecutors claim were orchestrated by the top of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
Instead, the trial has been postponed until at least early 2024, and people on both sides of the law are unhappy about it.
In January, Lassen County Special Prosecutor Jordan Funk formally moved to dismiss murder charges against two alleged Aryan Brotherhood members, Jason Corbett and Patrick Brady, involving a fatal stabbing at High Desert State Prison. Funk didn't publicly hold back his feelings, blaming the dismissal on the “glacial” federal prosecution that shows no signs of ending soon, while the county spends “thousands of dollars and significant court resources.”
“If federal murder convictions are eventually obtained (hopefully before hell freezes over), the state court case are highly likely to be dismissed,” Funk wrote. “In the circumstances then, it seems a huge waste of taxpayer resources to maintain the instate state court prosecutions.”
The state charges wouldn't have fundamentally changed Corbett or Brady's lives if they had been convicted; both are serving life terms and still face federal charges for the same homicide. In fact, though technically in federal custody, they both remain incarcerated in the state prison system, where federal prosecutors allege members of the Aryan Brotherhood were able to obtain contraband cellphones and discuss drug smuggling and murder plots.
Brady and Corbett are among half a dozen alleged Aryan Brotherhood members accused of the killings and alleged murder conspiracies. They were part of two dozen alleged gang members and associates charged in four different federal cases with a litany of federal crimes ranging from drug sales to murder in 2019. Since 2019, authorities have postponed deciding whether to seek the death penalty against the defendants, but they are clearly keeping their options open.
Late last year, federal prosecutors in Sacramento indicated they were seeking a superseding indictment, leading to speculation that new charges were coming. Instead, the indictment that dropped last December was a rehashing of the same charges filed in 2019, with no final decision made about whether the death penalty will be sought.
Attorneys for three defendants — William Sylvester, Brant “Two Scoops” Daniel and Danny Troxell — aren't happy about the trial postponement and asked U.S. Chief District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller to sever them from the other three, Corbett, Brady and Ronald Yandell, so that they have a chance of going to trial sooner. On Feb. 22, Mueller granted a motion to move the trial to 2024 but asked for more briefings on the severance motion, pledging to settle it with a written order soon.
Troxell and Yandell were part of the gang's three-man commission, along with a third prisoner named Dave Chance, who played leadership roles, according to prosecutors. Chance wasn't part of the RICO case but remains serving a life sentence in state prison.
Troxell's attorneys want the case split in half because they say that the prosecution's own evidence indicates a “schism” within the Aryan Brotherhood that demonstrates their client never agreed to the alleged murder conspiracies. In one 2016 call between Yandell and Matthew Hall — an alleged skinhead gang member who reportedly died of suicide after his arrest in this case — the two complained that Troxell wasn't getting on board with an alleged plot to kill a gang member named Kenneth “Kenwood” Johnson, Troxell's attorneys wrote in a motion.
On top of that, the defense points out that Johnson is facing his own federal charges of involvement in a gang-related 2020 double homicide in a separate case, which they say contradicts the idea that the gang wanted him dead four years earlier.
Prosecutors responded that the severance motion fails to meet established legal standards.
“In their motions, Daniel and Troxell fail to demonstrate how judicial efficiency is achieved, or court funds conserved, or inconvenience to jurors, witnesses, and public authorities diminished, by holding two separate trials where the same evidence demonstrating the Aryan Brotherhood's membership, command structure, codes of conduct, purposes and pattern of racketeering activity are introduced twice before two different juries,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hitt wrote in a response motion.
Daniel's attorneys, meanwhile, argue that their client is being illegally housed in solitary confinement in a Sacramento prison, even after being absolved of allegations that he plotted to kill a prison guard. In their latest legal brief, they say the lengthy solitary confinement period violates the socalled Ashker Settlement, a legal agreement that ended the use of indefinite solitary confinement in the state prison system.
The Ashker settlement came about thanks to a lawsuit filed by two inmates, Troxell and Todd Ashker, as well as a corresponding hunger strike and peace treaty between historically rivalrous groups in prison. It just so happens that Daniel was both a class member to the suit and a participant in the hunger strike.
“Their administration here knows they are violating the law, their own policy and the Ashker settlement,” Daniel said in a letter to this newspaper. He added, “All this is retaliation for the hunger strikes and more.”