A Grim Tutorial And a Grin

In a trial heavy with testimony of violent assaults, racial tension and revenge killings, Lesester McDaughtery was just what the doctor ordered.

Call him the Last Comic Shackled.

A member of the Crips and a convicted robber and cocaine distributor who’s spent most of the last 30 of his 50 years behind bars, McDaughtery wouldn’t seem an obvious candidate for comic relief. But while giving a federal jury in Orange County on Wednesday a tutorial on prison life, he also proved to be an engaging, articulate, sometimes poignant and often amusing witness in the government’s ongoing case against four members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison alliance.

You got the feeling that if they’d let him use a PowerPoint presentation, he could have done it.

The government alleges that Brotherhood kingpins have orchestrated a wide-ranging series of crimes over the years from behind bars. McDaughtery made it clear he considers the charges rather foolish, given the predatory nature of prison inmates and the need to maintain what you and I would call the social order.

“Groups form ultimately for survival,” McDaughtery said. “That’s one of the primal impulses of man, to survive.”

McDaughtery was called by the defense, apparently to convince jurors that life behind bars requires a different code than living on Main Street. And, not incidentally, to show that he, an African American with long-standing awareness of the Aryan Brotherhood, considers the two prime defendants -- Barry “The Baron” Mills and T.D. “The Hulk” Bingham -- friends whom he respects.

Inmates live under an unofficial “convict’s code” that revolves around getting and maintaining respect and, among other things, not snitching. But just as gangs can incite violence, so do they occasionally act as peacekeepers, he said.

“No one wants to live in chaos,” he said. “Only a madman would. You want to lay your head down sometime. You don’t want to be in Def Con 3 all the time.”

You must understand, he told jurors, “We’re like sardines in a can. If someone imposes on your space, the convict code requires you to respond to that.”

Sometimes, that means taking harsh action, which he says a prison full of “alpha males” is more than capable of doing.

But the dissertation never came across as morbid. McDaughtery had the entertainer’s touch of knowing when to lighten the mood. When asked by Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen Wolfe if he had any prejudices, McDaughtery replied, “I’m a Crip. I like blue.”

He went on to say that he wasn’t biased against a black prison gang known as the D.C. Blacks that the Aryan Brotherhood had allegedly targeted. Actually, McDaughtery said, he admired that group or “any man who can impose his will on people. One of my favorite men is the president, George Bush.”

“Do you admire the U.S. Department of Justice?” Wolfe asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” McDaughtery replied.

Earlier in his testimony, McDaughtery, who had been having a sometimes spirited but respectful give-and-take with Wolfe, realized he didn’t know how to address him.

“I didn’t get your name,” he said.

“Mr. Wolfe,” Wolfe replied.

“Wolfe,” McDaughtery said. “Hmm. Predatory.”

I think even Mr. Wolfe laughed at that one.

Later, McDaughtery denied he was trying to help out the Aryan Brotherhood just to sabotage the government’s case. “I’m merely here as a color analyst” to give jurors an idea of the realities of prison life, he said. He wondered why the government was singling out the Brotherhood when, he suggested, it acted as all prison gangs do. He also asked Wolfe why the government uses snitches when it knows that doing so places them in potential jeopardy from other inmates. Or why it granted immunity to Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, who admitted to multiple contract killings, just to nail mob boss John Gotti.

Those questions were left unanswered.

McDaughtery saved his best comic touch for the end of his friendly questioning from defense attorney H. Dean Steward. Steward told McDaughtery he couldn’t give him any money for his favorable testimony, nor any reduction in his current sentence, nor any other compensation, such as money for a new car.

McDaughtery smiled and said he realized all that. Then, with a comic’s pause for timing, he said, “How about a double cheeseburger?”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.