As witnesses testified that three Aryan Brotherhood members ordered drug deals, shakedowns and murders from their California prison cell phones, the question is not whether prosecutors will convict them; Doing so will prevent future crimes?
Kenneth Johnson, Francis Clement and John Stinson were already serving life sentences in the state system when the federal ju judges in Fresno convicted of assault and other crimes last week.
During the trial, prosecutors revealed that smuggling cell phones were flooded with prisons in California. Gang leaders use it to control the rackets both inside and outside the lockup.
Witnesses testified that they enjoyed using drones and using phones and drugs smuggled by corrupt staff. Authorities seized 4,109 phones across the California prison system in 2023, according to a prison spokesperson.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons offers a more severe situation. High-risk prisoners take place at Colorado’s so-called super-large security facilities, virtually inaccessible to each other or the outside world.
Despite Johnson, Clement and Stinson’s beliefs, it remains unclear whether they will leave California. They are currently being held at the Fresno County Jail.
Kenneth Johnson, Francis Clement and John Stinson were found guilty of ordering murder as a member of the Aryan Brotherhood while serving in prison in California last week.
(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
Stinson’s attorney Kenneth Reed said he doesn’t expect his client to go to federal prison after being sentenced in May.
Reed said three other Aryan Brotherhood members (state prisoners serving life sentences) committed assault at a trial in Sacramento last year but did not obtain federal custody. I pointed it out.
Stinson, 70, was first convicted of assault by a Los Angeles ju judge in 2007, serving a federal life period similar to his state’s life sentence.
At trials in both Los Angeles and Fresno, witnesses argued that three people arbitrate a dispute in the Aryan Brotherhood, a group of about 30 men who control many white prisoners in the California and federal prison systems. He testified that he was sitting on the committee.
Authorities once convicted federal court leaders and disbanded prison gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia by banishing them to places like ADX Florence in Colorado. I was about to do so. The biggest security prison, sometimes called “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” deems convicted drug cartel leaders, terrorists, fugitive artists and federal government to pose the highest risk to the public and other prisoners. He holds other famous prisoners.
The prison was kept in mind by Scott Kernan when he called on the U.S. Chief Prison Director to take custody of eight “very dangerous” prisoners in 2018 as secretary to the California Department of Amendments and Rehabilitation. It’s something I did.
In a letter filed before the court, Kernan said the inmates included members of the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia. Before they were charged, the California Department of Corrections Director wanted assurances of the federal prison system that they were willing to accept prisoners who demanded “the most restrictive conditions of confinement available.”
It is unclear how federal prison officials responded, but prosecutors brought charges against all eight prisoners in 2019.
A spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said none were taken to federal prisons. Spokesman Donald Murphy said he would not discuss the situation of prisoners not under agency custody.
A spokesperson for the US Lawyer’s Office for the Eastern District of California, which attempted the Fresno-Sacramento case, declined to comment.
In the Sacramento case, one of the defendants, Blunt Daniel, is trying to rescind his guilty plea, saying that he only admitted the murder because he thought he would be sent to federal prison.
Daniel, 50, did not in his motion say why he wanted to be in federal prison. One potential factor was that authorities revealed a conspiracy to kill him by other members of the Aryan Brotherhood, prosecutors wrote in court documents.
At Daniel’s judicial hearing, U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller said the federal prison system could not be ordered to accept state prisoners, according to the transcript of the case. The U.S. Department of Justice’s deputy attorney general must approve it, Mueller said.
During the hearing, Sacramento’s assistant US lawyer Jason Hitt said he was undergoing a “behind the scenes process” to lead Daniel to federal custody.
That didn’t happen. Nine months after the hearing, Hitt said in court documents that federal officials refused to take Daniel. Their decision was “part of the Judicial Justice Department’s decision-making process that is not subject to review,” Hitt wrote.
Daniel remains in Sacramento, California prison, to determine whether a judge will allow him to regain his guilty plea.
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