Thread: U.S. prosecutor leaves Texas Aryan case over security

U.S. prosecutor leaves Texas Aryan case over security

Michael Winter, USA TODAY6:33p.m. EDT April 2, 2013

34 members of Aryan Brotherhood facing trial for racketeering.


An Aryan Brotherhood tattoo on a member of the neo-Nazi extremist group.(Photo: U.S. Justice Department via Wikipedia)


Security concerns have prompted a federal prosecutor in Houston to withdraw from a big racketeering case involving the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, which has been a focus of the investigations into the slayings of the Kaufman County district attorney and an assistant.
Assistant U.S. attorney Jay Hileman on Tuesday notified attorneys representing 34 defendants, The Dallas Morning News and TPM reported. A Justice Department prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who is already involved in the case will take over.
Neither the Morning News nor TPM specified the security issues or say whether Hileman or his family had been threatened.
"He's obviously made a decision based on something," said defense attorney Richard O. Ely II, who added that he had been threatened when he was a prosecutor.
One of the group's former top leaders, Terry Sillers, has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the case, which is being prosecuted in Houston. Authorities have him in protective custody.
The neo-Nazi gang has come under renewed scrutiny since Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found dead in their home Saturday. Investigators said he had been shot 20 times. In January, country prosecutor Mark Hasse was gunned down in a parking lot not far from the courthouse.
KTVT-TV reported Tuesday that investigators found evidence near the McLellands' home indicating they may been watched before the killings.
The Anti-Defamation League has ranked the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist prison gang, as the nation's most violent extremist group. The Texas Department of Public Safety lists the brotherhood as a "significant" threat.
Here's some of what the ADL said in in a report last year:

Since 2000, ABT members and associates have committed at least 29 murders in the United States, all in Texas or neighboring states. The true number is likely considerably higher, as most murders that occur behind prison walls do not get reported by the media. The 29 known killings are all "street" killings, more evidence of the growing presence of racist prison gangs on the streets of America.

Also Tuesday, KSAT-TV reported that one of the racketeering defendants, James Francis Sampsell, is a "general" for the group. Federal agents said they recorded him in late January selling a quarter pound of methamphetamine in a Walmart parking lot in Conroe, Texas, and arrested him after a chase.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/02/texas-federal-prosecutor-security-aryan-brotherhood/2047615/

Anyone who has ever worked in a prison will tell you it is usually best not to mess with The Brotherhood. They will kill your Momma just so they can laugh at you when you cry.