SACRAMENTO — Three members of the Aryan Brotherhood have been found guilty of operating a criminal organization, following a lengthy trial that exposed secrets on both sides of the law.
Ronald “Renegade” Yandell, Danny Troxell, and William Sylvester, were convicted of federal charges related to their leadership roles in the all-white prison gang. All three were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering, while Yandell was convicted of involvement in drug distribution, and joining Sylvester in plots to smuggle contraband into prison.
Yandell’s defense was two-pronged; his lawyers accused prison officials and federal authorities of retaliating against him for his political activism while behind bars, which included work on a massive prisoner-led hunger strike to end solitary confinement. He also blamed a deceased dropout gang member, Gary Littrell, for ordering the murder of a former San Quentin Six member who’d been a target of prison gangs for years.
Sylvester’s lawyer argued that when Sylvester and another man fatally stabbed another inmate at California State Prison, Sacramento, it was motivated by his dislike of a “known child molester,” not a gang-related reason as prosecutors content. Troxell’s lawyer painted his client as a peacemaker who used his influential status to call off murders, not order them.
The trial lasted nearly three months, and provided a top-to-bottom overview of the inner workings of the Aryan Brotherhood, a gang that prosecutors say controls the majority of white inmates in California prisons, as well as having a hand in various efforts to traffic methamphetamine and heroin on the outside. The evidence included the defendants own words, recorded during a two-month wiretap operation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The wide range of witnesses included low-level former prisoners who acted as drug couriers, as well as the head of California prisons, Jeffrey Macomber, who testified as a subpoenaed defense witness about warnings authorities received before a Black Guerrilla Family member named Hugo “Yogi” Pinell was murdered by two Aryan Brotherhood members who earned their way into the gang by committing the prison stabbing.
Jurors also heard from former gang members who were charged as co-defendants, like the co-founder of an Orange County-based skinhead gang known as Public Enemy Number One, or PENI, to a heroin dealer and former Aryan Brotherhood member who testified that he made fist fulls of cash for years from his prison cell, through using contraband cellphones to direct drug deals on the outside.
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