Aryan Inmate Capital Trials to Start

Armed with a shank, Barry “The Baron” Mills, the kingpin of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, nearly decapitated an inmate in a bathroom stall for hoarding drugs.

Edgar “The Snail” Hevle, a trusted lieutenant in the Brotherhood, allegedly arranged for the murder of a prisoner who threw a packet of sugar at him, a slight he apparently considered worthy of a violent death.

And Tommy “Terrible Tom” Silverstein, who had earned his stripes by killing three inmates, escaped from his shackles on the way back from the prison showers and killed a guard by stabbing him 20 times.

Acts of brutality and callous retribution among the ranks of the nation’s most hardened criminals provide the bedrock of the largest capital case filed in U.S. history, against Aryan Brotherhood leaders, which will begin to unfold in courtrooms in Los Angeles and Santa Ana in the coming weeks.

At least eight convicts, some already serving life sentences and doomed to spend their days in solitary confinement, may get the death penalty if convicted of murder in the upcoming federal racketeering trials. Prosecutors are still deciding whether to seek the death penalty for eight others.

With the aim of winning capital sentences for crimes committed in prison, the case -- which involves 32 counts of murder and attempted murder -- is designed to dismantle the Aryan Brotherhood in much the same way the feds took apart the mob decades ago.

Beyond eliminating key gang leaders by putting them on death row, prosecutors hope the sheer number of gang members they have been able to turn into informants will cripple the Brotherhood.

In a prison note intercepted by authorities, Mills said any Brotherhood defectors should be wiped off “the face of the Earth!”

“It’s likely necessary for us to step-up and conduct a thorough evaluation of every brother’s personal character and level of commitment, as we currently possess some serious rot that is in fact potentially a cancer!” he wrote in the note.

Defense attorneys said the government’s case was flawed, resting on the premise that inmates locked in solitary confinement can operate an elaborate interstate criminal enterprise and that prison snitches are reliable sources.

Attorneys for the inmates are seeking to suppress the testimony of a group of informants they say were housed together at a “supermax” federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo. The defense says “the snitches” were coached by prosecutors and provided with information so they could be convincing on the witness stand.

To win such testimony, defense attorneys say, informants were bribed with pornographic magazines, restaurant meals, Nike shoes, video game players and, in one case, a sexual rendezvous.

Mills’ attorney said the suggestion that his client could orchestrate the murders of inmates in Pennsylvania while he was serving time in the Colorado “supermax” is absurd.

The federal courtroom in Santa Ana where four of the inmates are going on trial, including leaders Mills and T.D. “The Hulk” Bingham, is heavily fortified. There’s an extra metal detector, a small army of plainclothes U.S. marshals and a specially constructed defendants’ table, designed so jurors can’t see that the inmates are chained to the floor.

There have been several instances of courtroom violence involving Brotherhood gang members, including a trial during which an inmate stabbed his attorney four times.

Security is such a concern that U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said that if one of the defense witnesses -- “Terrible Tom” Silverstein, the Aryan Brotherhood leader who murdered the prison guard -- appeared in his Santa Ana courtroom, he would be bound in restraints similar to those for Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter in the movie “Silence of the Lambs.”

Federal prosecutors allege that the leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood orchestrated dozens of hits over two decades inside and outside maximum-security prisons across the country, using a three-man commission that would approve the slayings. An additional four defendants will be on trial but will not face the death penalty.

“We live in a mean, ugly world,” said one of the gang’s top leaders, Michael Patrick “Big Mac” McElhiney, at his 1994 federal trial for trafficking heroin in prison. He’s targeted for the death penalty in the coming trial, after a number of prison killings. “We try to aspire to be better, but not according to your value system. That’s why we’re in prison. We don’t obey your laws. We don’t agree with them. We make our own laws.”

Prosecutors contend that for years, despite being locked in their cells for 23 hours a day and isolated from other prisoners, Brotherhood leaders engaged in a Mafia-style operation of drug trafficking, extortion and approved hits.

Orders would be given in creative ways: tapping out Morse code on the prison floors and walls, shouting ancient Aztec words that Brotherhood members would understand and heed, and using family and friends to pass along demands. Prosecutors say the Aryans also used coded notes, some written in urine that acted like invisible ink.

For face-to-face meetings, the inmates -- serving as their own attorneys for prison crimes -- would subpoena their associates.

In 2004, in a trial that served as a precursor to the current ones, a federal jury deadlocked on whether to convict an Aryan Brotherhood leader, David Sahakian, and two associates on murder and conspiracy charges in the 1999 death of a black inmate in the federal prison in Marion, Ill.

In all, 20 defendants will be tried in three courtrooms. Forty were originally charged; 19 reached plea bargains and one has died.

U.S. District Judge George H. King in Los Angeles will preside over a trial involving 11 defendants, scheduled to begin this month. Before another Los Angeles federal judge, five more defendants are expected to be tried in October.

But in what promises to be the case’s main attraction, the Brotherhood’s two kingpins, Mills and No. 2 man Bingham, are scheduled to go on trial Feb. 27 in Santa Ana. Together, prosecutors say, the pair are responsible for sanctioning most of the 32 murders and attempted murders listed in the indictment. The death penalty counts for Mills and Bingham stem from the murders of two black inmates in a prison in Lewisburg, Pa.

They will be tried along with Edgar “The Snail” Hevle and Christopher O. Gibson, two associates accused of murder and attempted murder. Prospective jurors have been told the trial could take nine months.

During jury selection now underway, Bingham hardly looked like a prison superthug. Dressed in a new button-down shirt and slacks and wearing wire-rimmed glasses, he had an avuncular appearance. He often stroked his walrus mustache, traded jokes with one of his attorneys and nodded politely when introduced to a prospective juror across the courtroom.

Only the bulk beneath his shirt hinted at Bingham’s history as one of the most feared men in the U.S. federal prison system. Having reportedly once bench-pressed 500 pounds, he has a Star of David on one arm, to reflect his Jewish heritage, and a swastika on the other.

Mills’ appearance was professorial. He wore a gray button-down shirt, slacks and tortoiseshell glasses that slipped down the bridge of his nose. His shaved head gleamed from the court lights. He, too, nodded politely at each potential juror.

He didn’t look like the boss of America’s most feared prison gang, which once approved the killing of an inmate who bumped a Brotherhood member during a basketball game. The guilty party was stabbed 71 times and had his eyes gouged out.

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In 1964, a group of white inmates in San Quentin began to organize in the prison yard, forming a group to protect themselves against a black militant gang. They eventually merged with other white gangs and called themselves the Aryan Brotherhood, also known in prison vernacular as the Brand.

They marked themselves with identifying tattoos: a shamrock in tribute to the Irish heritage of many members, swastikas and “666,” the biblical sign of Satan.

Membership requirements were simple: “Blood in, blood out.” Inmates had to kill someone to join the Aryan Brotherhood, and death was the only way out. When one Aryan brother received protection from prison officials in exchange for his testimony, gang leaders ordered a hit on the informant’s father.

Government reports and court documents track the Brotherhood’s evolution:

As the gang flourished and spread to other prisons, its leaders decided they needed a summit to formalize the structure of the growing Aryan Brotherhood. They met at the California Institute for Men in Chino, summoned there by subpoenas wielded by member inmates charged with prison crimes and acting as their own attorneys.

For more than a year in the early ‘80s, Brotherhood leaders met daily in the prison yard to hammer out their business model for running drugs and regulating violence. They opted for a tiered government structure, with a three-man commission that had to approve any murder or assault on a Brand member. But snitches could be killed without approval.

They also relaxed the “Blood in” rule, conceding that they needed different kinds of talent to run their operation. Authorities said the Aryan Brotherhood began to recruit explosives experts, chemists, people with legal backgrounds and those who would be able to run scams inside and outside the prison.

In 1997, U.S. Atty. Greg Jessner, who had successfully prosecuted one Aryan Brotherhood murder case, launched an investigation designed to use racketeering laws to take out the leadership of the Brand.

In recent years, federal prosecutors have used racketeering statues to successfully prosecute members of several prison gangs, including 29 members of the Aryan Circle in Texas and 10 members of the Nazi Low Riders in California.

The investigation by Jessner, working with the FBI, prison officials and what was then named the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, resulted in a 110-page federal grand jury indictment that led to the arrest in 2002 of 40 alleged leaders of the Brand and their associates.

It’s unclear how badly damaged the Aryan Brotherhood will be if the government wins the case. Prison experts say the leadership vacuum will be quietly filled with other inmates, though they will be less experienced.

“In some respects, it’s more an issue of justice than wiping out the Aryan Brotherhood,” said Mark Pitcavage, director of fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League and an expert on prison gangs.

Jessner, who has now opened his family law practice and won’t be prosecuting the case, said he didn’t know what effect a successful prosecution would have on the Brand. But he did know one thing: “If Mills gets the death penalty and gets put to death, that will deter him.”