SACRAMENTO — In three weeks, a federal judge is set to decide on a prosecution motion to bar a group of alleged Aryan Brotherhood members and associates from personally attending “non-essential” hearings in a racketeering and multiple-count murder case against them.
On Jan. 8, federal Judge Kimberly Mueller will decide whether to force several defendants to use a videoconferencing system in lieu of attending court, which prosecutors argue is necessary because the defendants are dangerous. It is a move that Mueller acknowledged at an Oct. 23 court hearing was unprecedented in federal litigation, though she said she’d still consider approving it.
But according to federal prosecutors, the threat of these restrictions hasn’t stopped the defendants from continuing to commit crimes, including plotting to smuggle cellphones into the Sacramento County Jail where most of them are housed and talking about “taking out” a person who introduced one of the defendant’s wives to an undercover federal agent.
The latest infraction? In late November, staff at New Folsom Prison in Sacramento raided the cell of Michael “Mosca” Torres, 55, where he’s housed pending trial on suspicion of conspiring with Aryan Brotherhood leader Ronald Dean Yandell, 57, and others, to distribute heroin inside California’s prison system. They found a cellphone charger, as well as an inmate-made key designed to unlock handcuffs, according to court records.
They also recovered a “kite,” or illicit note, from Torres, in which he appears to threaten another inmate over a dispute involving heroin. In the note, Torres reminds the man that he’s paid him $2,000 for “black” — believed to be a reference to black tar heroin — and expresses displeasure about how things have transpired since then.
“I don’t know what kind of games you playing Lee (sic) but don’t try and play me. I have long reach and I’ve never played you,” Torres allegedly wrote. Around the same time the note was sent, prison staff intercepted a piece of mail containing heroin addressed to the alleged recipient of Torres’ note, prosecutors said.
In another part of the letter, Torres reportedly wrote that he was caught with a handcuff key but added, “I think they planted it there.”
Torres, Yandell, and two-dozen suspected Aryan Brotherhood members and associates were indicted in July. The defendants face a range of charges, including five murders and four alleged murder plots, almost all centered in California prisons. The charges are largely based on wiretapped calls involving Yandell, who is accused of ordering several stabbings and directing heroin and meth smuggling rings from his prison cell in Sacramento.
In a case that involves some of the most feared prison inmates in California, Torres stands out for many reasons. Unlike most of his co-defendants, he is being housed in prison — not county jail — as he awaits trial. He also has opted to be his own attorney, a move that will get him increased access to certain prosecution files, as well as unregulated communication with the outside.
And unlike his co-defendants — all alleged members or associates of various all-white gangs — Torres is listed as a high-ranking member of the Mexican Mafia, perhaps the most infamous prison gang in California. In 2005, authorities seized a Mexican Mafia kite that said Torres controlled “the entire Los Angeles jail system,” and a book by a high-ranking Mexican Mafia dropout says Torres once ran a “drug-trafficking operation that spread from Hawaii to Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and New Jersey” from California prisons.
Since becoming his own attorney, Torres has filed numerous handwritten legal motions. The latest, filed Dec. 12, is a petition to free Torres from being chained in court. Torres and his co-defendants have appeared in court with all four limbs shackled, and their handcuff locks covered by a restraint known as “the black box,” which Torres referred to as a “torture device.”
“The black box immobilizes the handcuffs from moving, thereby restricting your hand movement,” Torres wrote. “This forces the cuffs to become embedded in your wrists, inflicting severe pain, numbness of your wrists, and swelling of your hands.”
Federal prosecutors, led by assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hitt, have countered that Torres represents a “clear and present danger” and should continue to be restrained, citing the handcuff key as an example. Hitt wrote in a Dec. 9 court filing that the key outs prison staff “in danger by permitting an inmate like Torres to easily slip his handcuffs off and attack them.”
On Jan. 8, five Sacramento sheriff’s deputies are set to testify about various rule violations involving the defendants. Mueller also will hear from Jason Corbett, one of the defendants, who is expected to testify that a jail guard was mistaken when he claimed to hear Corbett discussing cellphone smuggling with another suspected Aryan Brotherhood member, Samuel Keeton.
But there is one issue Mueller won’t need to rule on at the hearing: Keeton recently dropped a motion that Mueller order staff to serve him kosher meals at the jail, explaining through his attorney that the sheriff’s office has finally acquiesced to that request.
