A choose on Monday sentenced three leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood to federal jail phrases, clearing the best way for the lads to be transferred from the California lockups the place they orchestrated murders and racketeering schemes and into the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The sentences handed down don’t essentially imply the lads must serve their time within the extra restrictive federal jail system. However prosecutors within the case stated such transfers have been “doubtless.” Proof introduced throughout trial confirmed the three longtime inmates had exploited the California jail system’s lack of ability to weed out contraband telephones .
President Trump has invoked the U.S. Bureau of Prisons as a cornerstone of a crackdown on what he calls lawlessness in cities and states led by Democrats. This month, he proposed reopening Alcatraz, the decaying island penitentiary within the San Francisco Bay, to deal with the nation’s “most ruthless and violent” criminals.
Within the final six years, federal prosecutors in Sacramento and Fresno have focused the Aryan Brotherhood, the dominant prison group amongst white inmates within the California jail system.
Two of the group’s leaders, Kenneth Johnson, 64, and Francis Clement, 58, have been sentenced Monday to life phrases in federal jail after being convicted of homicide and racketeering, a spokeswoman for the U.S. legal professional in Sacramento stated.
U.S. District Choose Jennifer Thurston sentenced one other Aryan Brotherhood member, John Stinson, 70, to twenty years in federal jail — an instructional punishment, given he’d already obtained a federal life time period in 2007.
Quite than being transferred to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on the time, Stinson was despatched again to state jail, the place he’d been serving a sentence of life with out parole for murdering a Lengthy Seaside drug supplier in 1979.
Johnson and Clement have been additionally serving life sentences in California’s state jail system. Johnson was convicted in 1996 of trying to homicide a Madera County sheriff’s deputy. Clement has been imprisoned for a homicide dedicated on his 18th birthday, when he minimize his good friend’s throat throughout a street journey to Las Vegas.
Throughout a trial this 12 months in Fresno, federal prosecutors confirmed that Johnson, Clement and Stinson coordinated murders, drug gross sales, fraud and extortion inside and outdoors jail partitions, usually utilizing smuggled telephones. In some circumstances, their underlings on the road funneled cash from the prison enterprises into the inmates’ financial institution accounts.
The defendants confronted few repercussions. At Johnson’s most up-to-date parole listening to in 2022, which he refused to attend, a parole commissioner stated Johnson had been caught utilizing telephones eight instances within the earlier three years.
On the shut of the Fresno trial, all three defendants have been convicted of racketeering. Johnson and Clement have been additionally discovered responsible of commissioning murders — Johnson was tied to 2 killings and Clement to 5 — on the streets of Los Angeles County. Thurston despatched all three males again to state jail after the decision to await sentencing.
Attorneys for Johnson and Clement final week requested that their sentencing be delayed. In a movement, they stated a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent notified the California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation that Johnson and Clement had been marked for “assault and/or homicide” after the trial.
The agent warned that “violence will inevitably happen” if the 2 prisoners remained on the whole inhabitants, in response to the movement. Protection attorneys stated the alleged menace to Johnson and Clement could possibly be grounds for a brand new trial and requested for extra time to research.
Prosecutors argued Johnson and Clement have been making an attempt “merely to delay their inevitable switch” to federal jail.
This month, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons took custody of 5 Aryan Brotherhood members who have been convicted of homicide and racketeering in 2024. They’re now serving life phrases at federal penitentiaries at Victorville and Atwater, Calif.
Prosecutors stated in a movement it was doubtless that Johnson, Clement and Stinson have been additionally certain for federal jail. In a sentencing memo, prosecutors known as it a becoming place for males resembling Clement, who confirmed a “full disregard for human life” in ordering the torture and killings of his victims.
Clement’s attorneys stated it was simpler in charge the one who did the crimes than to attempt to change the “violent, unstable, chaotic surroundings” during which they have been dedicated. No guards have been prosecuted for smuggling in telephones or colluding with gang leaders, the attorneys famous in a sentencing memo.
“What distinction does it actually make to spend thousands and thousands of taxpayer {dollars} to present three aged prisoners one other life sentence,” they requested, “whereas not spending a penny on making institutional adjustments” in California’s prisons?
