A 49-year-old state prison inmate pleaded guilty Wednesday to murder in aid of racketeering as part of a long-running investigation into the California Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, a U.S. Attorney said.
After Brant Daniel of Sacramento entered his plea, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller immediately sentenced him to a mandatory life sentence in federal prison, Phillip A. Talbert said in a press statement issued Thursday.
“This guilty plea and sentence represents a significant setback for one of California’s most notorious white supremacist prison gangs,” said Talbert, who leads the U.S. Department of Justice’s Eastern District of California in Sacramento. “We will continue to use every law enforcement tool to protect the communities plagued by the violence and criminal activities of the Aryan Brotherhood.”
“The Aryan Brotherhood hides behind prison walls while they direct criminal activities and brutal crimes of violence,” Brian Clark, a Drug Enforcement Agency special agent in charge, added in the prepared statement. “In this case, Brant Daniel murdered an individual in cold blood to maintain his status and prove allegiance to the prison gang. We will relentlessly pursue and prosecute those who commit such heinous acts from behind bars and beyond.”
According to court documents, between 2011 and 2016, Aryan Brotherhood members and associates engaged in racketeering, committing multiple acts involving murder, conspiracies to murder, and drug trafficking crimes.
AB gang members allegedly oversaw a significant heroin and methamphetamine trafficking operation from their California prison cells, using smuggled cellphones to direct drug trafficking activities, order murders, and oversee other criminal activities inside and outside of the prisons.
As part of his guilty plea, Daniel admitted that he murdered Zachary Scott, 36, an inmate at Salinas Valley Prison on Oct. 29, 2016, as part of an AB-related killing. In particular, Daniel admitted that he committed the murder because the victim failed to carry out a hit assigned by an AB member and then lost valuable drugs belonging to Daniel and, thus, to the prison gang, according to Talbert.
“In his plea, Daniel admitted that he willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation, murdered the victim in order to maintain his status within the gang,” he noted in the statement.
The case stems from an investigation by the DEA, with, said Talbert, “substantial” help from the Vallejo Police Department, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office, and the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jason Hitt, Ross Pearson, and David Spencer led the prosecution in the case.
Daniel’s conviction came as five remaining defendants — Ronald Yandell, Billy Sylvester, Danny Troxell, Pat Brady, and Jason Corbett — are scheduled for trial in February.
The case was investigated under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces’ multi-agency program, noted Talbert.
The Aryan Brotherhood, also known as The Brand, Alice Baker, AB or One-Two, is the nation’s oldest major white supremacist prison gang and a national crime syndicate, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Founded in 1964 by Irish bikers at San Quentin State Prison as a way to protect white inmates in newly desegregated prisons, the AB is today the largest and deadliest prison gang in the United States, with an estimated 20,000 members inside prisons and on the streets.
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