Chilling videos cap prison gang trial

By Tori Richards

SANTA ANA, Calif (Reuters) – Chilling prison video of
attempted murders and an account of an inmate licking blood off
his hands took center stage in a California courtroom on
Tuesday as prosecutors presented closing arguments in a trial
aimed at breaking the ruthless Aryan Brotherhood gang.

As the four-month-old racketeering and conspiracy trial of
four alleged gang leaders entered its closing stages, assistant
U.S. Attorney Terri Flynn told jurors the Aryan Brotherhood
used murder as a tool to corner drug trafficking and gambling
in the U.S. prison system and on the streets.

Pointing at the four middle-aged defendants, dressed in
civilian clothes but shackled to the floor with chains, Flynn
said: “These men ran the Aryan Brotherhood. They imposed murder
when necessary to keep the goals of the Aryan Brotherhood
operating as they should. How did they do that? By taking out
anyone in their path.”

Suspected Aryan Brotherhood chief Barry “The Baron” Mills,
his alleged top lieutenant Tyler “the Hulk” Bingham,
Christopher Gibson and Edgar “the Snail” Hevle went on trial in
March in the government’s first salvo in a legal war that
prosecutors hope will destroy the 40 year-old gang.

Prosecutors have alleged that the Brotherhood orchestrated
32 murders or attempted murders over a 30-year period from
behind the bars of some of America’s toughest prisons.

If convicted, some of the accused could face the death
penalty.

Flynn said one Brotherhood member was strangled with sheets
for being a homosexual and spitting at Hevle in a murder
ordered by Bingham and Mills.

In a 1993 murder in a Kansas prison, a victim was stabbed
25 times until the knife went through his body and scraped on
the floor. The killer then “licked the blood off his hands,”
Flynn said.

In a replay of one of five prison security videos shown
during the trial, the jury heard Gibson and two other
Brotherhood members grunting as they stabbed a rival gang
member in the Colorado maximum security prison yard in 1997.

The trial has relied heavily on testimony from former gang
members and convicted killers who described orders written in
urine and weapons hidden in the genitals of prison visitors.

The defense, which presents its closing arguments on
Wednesday, has argued that government witnesses testified in
exchange for cash, Internet access and pornography.

The Aryan Brotherhood began as a mostly white group of
inmates who banded together at California’s San Quentin state
prison in the 1960s to protect themselves against black and
Hispanic prisoners.

Forty people were charged in the case in 2002. Up to 16
could face the death penalty if convicted. Nineteen have struck
plea bargains, one defendant has died and trials are pending
for the rest.