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Chilling videos cap prison gang trial

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 July 2006, 18:19 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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