By Nate Gartrell
The Mercury News
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It has been nearly six years since federal prosecutors here revealed the first of two massive prosecutions aimed at moving incarcerated Aryan Brotherhood members out of the state prison system for the stated goal of keeping the public safe.
But two jury trials and three guilty pleas later, none of the nine Aryan Brotherhood members convicted of crimes that carry life have spent a single day in federal prison. All of them remain in state prison or county jail cells, where prosecutors alleged at the beginning of the case that they were able to easily obtain contraband phones and wreak havoc inside and outside of prison.
But according to the U.S. Department of Justice, that’s all about to change. At a court hearing earlier this month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hitt said the federal Bureau of Prisons has finally agreed to take on the Aryan Brotherhood members who’ve been sentenced to life, and that it’s all just a matter of time before they do.
There’s just one tiny hiccup: Lawyers with the state California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal BOP are working out the specifics, and have to decide from two options. Hitt told Senior U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller that it’s a “slower process than you would think” but it will “still happen at some point,” for sure.
“The bottom line is, the wheels are moving,” Hitt said in court.
If the transfers do take place, it would end a saga that has gone on for more than a year and sparked more legal drama.
Hitt’s words were of little solace to Brant “Two Scoops” Daniel, a 50-year-old Aryan Brotherhood member who pleaded guilty in December 2023 because he actually wants to go to federal prison. Instead, he has been met with “lies” and “excuses,” he told a reporter during a call from a prison tablet.
“I never expected this kind of criminal behavior from the government,” Daniel said.
Imprisoned for life since age 19, Daniel says he is sick of “corruption” in the state system and simply wants a change of scenery. He expected to be on the next bus to a federal prison yard, and prosecutors said at the time they’d work to make that happen. Nearly 18 months later, he’s still in the same California State Prison Sacramento module he has been in for years.
Irate with the lengthy wait, Daniel has directed his lawyers to force the government’s hand by filing court papers to allow him to back out of his deal, arguing prosecutors violated the conditions of his guilty plea by failing to transfer him. Mueller has yet to rule on the motion.
After Daniel’s guilty plea, two of his co-defendants pleaded guilty. Three more were convicted in April 2024. Five of the six have been formally sentenced to federal prison.
None have been transferred there. Neither has John “Pops” Stinson, one of three gang members convicted of racketeering and murder last February, in a separate racketeering case also aimed at the Aryan Brotherhood.
Stinson, a 70-year-old Aryan Brotherhood leader imprisoned since 1981, was known as “Youngster” back in the early 2000s, when he was sentenced to life in federal prison the first time. Like the others, his commitment to the BOP has existed only on paper, thus far.
In 2019, federal prosecutors in Sacramento said they were going after a group of the state’s “most dangerous” Aryan Brotherhood members — all of whom were already serving state prison sentences for murder — because the gang had figured out how to manipulate the local prison system so easily it wasn’t deterring them from committing crimes. Gang leaders had been caught with dozens of contraband phones and used them to run drug rings and order murders, arsons, robberies, and shakedowns throughout California and beyond, according to court records.
The start of 2025 has been particularly violent for California prisons thus far. Officials have announced nine homicide investigations, including one alleged Aryan Brotherhood associate who killed his cellmate in an administrative segregation unit after the two of them had killed another person on a prison yard.
These types of stabbings are why federal prosecutors argued in 2019 that it was necessary to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — the same law used to prosecute Italian mobsters and outlaw biker gangs — against men already virtually guaranteed to live out their lives behind bars.
Nine convictions have followed. Now all that’s left is to get them on the plane.
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