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Posted: February 12, 2003
Five members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang, and one accomplice pleaded guilty on February 3 to numerous charges in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, including attempted murder, racketeering and drug counts.
The Brotherhood, one of the country's most prominent racist prison gangs, has engaged in extortion, drug operations, prostitution, and violence in federal and state prisons since the 1960's.
Many of the crimes were planned from California state prisons, where most of the defendants are already serving time on other convictions.
The gang members took responsibility for ordering, plotting, or attempting to commit murders in pursuit of racketeering activities. The accomplice admitted to having participated in an armed robbery in which a Eureka, California, family was taken hostage, and conspiring to smuggle methamphetamines into Pelican Bay State Prison.
Pelican Bay State Prison inmate James Pendleton, 57, and Corcoran State
Prison inmate Reuben Pappan, 58, each pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Pendleton faces 12 1/2 years in federal prison, while Pappan faces 14 years.
Pappan's cellmate, Robert Shields, 45, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder and could receive a seven year sentence. Tehachapi State Prison inmate John Harper, 50, admitted he tried to commit murder to preserve and maintain the Brotherhood's interests and faces eight years in federal prison. Pelican Bay inmate Mark Glass, 48, also confessed to trying to kill two people for the gang and faces 11 years and three months.
Brenda Moore, 46, an inmate at the women's prison in Chowchilla, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and another count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. She faces seven years and three months in federal prison.
Moore's former boyfriend, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, the alleged architect behind many of the crimes, still awaits trial.
Sentencing for all those charged is scheduled to take place on April 28.
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