Heads of Aryan Brotherhood prison gang guilty of murder

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Two kingpins of the Aryan Brotherhood were convicted of racketeering and murder Friday, capping a five-month trial aimed at crushing one of the nation's most fearsome, far-flung prison gangs.

After two weeks of deliberation, jurors found that the gang leaders, Barry "The Baron" Mills and Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham, ordered dozens of bloody attacks from maximum-security cellblocks. They are now eligible for the death penalty.

The two did not flinch as guilty verdicts were read in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.

The Aryan Brotherhood trial was the first of several that taken together represent the largest prison-gang prosecution the government has attempted and one of the largest capital cases in U.S. history.

Lawyers on both sides declined to discuss the case because the penalty phase was pending.

The case in Santa Ana involved 17 murders or attempted murders starting in 1979, when Mills nearly decapitated another inmate in an Atlanta prison for cheating a gang member on a drug deal, and concluding with the 1997 stabbing deaths of two black inmates at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa.

The gang — said to number just 100 men but so dreaded it controlled drug and gambling rackets nationwide — used terror as a tool to enforce obedience among prison populations. In some cases, it targeted inmates suspected of wearing the "rat jacket," or cooperating with authorities.

As the gang's top bosses in the federal prison system, Mills, 57, and Bingham, 59, were accused of orchestrating much of the violence from behind the scenes, including the murders of gang brethren who ran afoul of the Brotherhood's strict internal code by abusing drugs and flaunting homosexual relationships.

They also masterminded the single bloodiest day involved in the case. On Aug. 28, 1997, gang members armed themselves with shivs and launched a blitz against black inmates at the Lewisburg prison. Six inmates were stabbed, two fatally.

Along with Mills and Bingham, lesser Brotherhood leaders Edgar "The Snail" Hevle, 55, and Christopher Gibson, 47, were convicted of conspiring to murder black inmates. They face 20 years to life in prison when Judge David Carter sentences them in October.

The four defendants had been serving lengthy sentences, but Bingham and Hevle were scheduled to be released in four years.

"I think this is an unprecedented prosecution," said Gregory Jessner, the former assistant U.S. attorney who spearheaded the case and is now in private practice. "There's never been this systematic 'let's take off the whole leadership' attempt."

By the government's account, Brotherhood leaders ran the gang's far-reaching network by adapting ingeniously to the tight surveillance conditions in maximum-security lockups.

To transmit messages, the gang employed an elaborate system of codes and cryptograms — including a 400-year-old binary alphabet system devised by Sir Francis Bacon — as well as more prosaic jailhouse ruses, such as putting notes in mop handles and under recreation-yard rocks.

One of the government's star witnesses, Al Benton, a high-ranking Brotherhood defector, testified that he stabbed a victim to death in Lewisburg after receiving a smuggled order from Bingham, incarcerated 1,700 miles away at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. Benton testified that the order was written in invisible ink made from urine; the message came into view when the note was held over a flame.

Benton could have faced the death penalty but instead received a nine-year sentence in exchange for his testimony.

The Aryan Brotherhood case stems from a 2002 indictment against 40 defendants accused of ruling or serving the gang, which originated at San Quentin State Prison in the 1960s, where white inmates bound together for protection.

Mills and Bingham were convicted on five of six counts brought by the federal government. The single acquittal involved a murder charge for the death of an inmate at the Lompoc Federal Prison.

The trial's next phase, in which jurors determine whether Mills and Bingham should spend life in prison or die in the execution chamber, begins Aug. 15.