California inmate pleads guilty to murder in aid of racketeering in Aryan Brotherhood case
A key defendant in the federal government’s racketeering prosecution of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang pleaded guilty Wednesday in Sacramento to murder in aid of racketeering and was sentenced to life in prison.
Brant Daniel, 49, agreed to plead guilty before Chief U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller as part of an agreement that calls for federal officials to seek to have Daniel serve his time in a federal prison instead of a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facility.
Daniel has previously accused state prison guards of threatening him, planting contraband in his cell and being complicit in the deaths of other inmates.
The plea deal does not call for Daniel to cooperate with prosecutors, according to his lawyer, John Balazs.
“Mr. Daniel pled guilty today to only his own conduct with NO cooperation in exchange for a life sentence with the expectation that he will serve the sentence in federal prison rather than serve his sentences in state prison,” Balazs wrote in an email statement to The Sacramento Bee. “By doing so, Mr. Daniel pled guilty to a murder he had already pled guilty to in Monterey County Superior Court.
“He did so to spare his family the grief, expense and burden of a jury trial.”
Daniel’s plea deal comes six weeks after federal prosecutors announced they would not seek a death penalty prosecution against defendants in the case, which is set to go to trial Feb. 26.
The racketeering case was filed in 2019 and charged members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang of orchestrating murders, drug deals and other crimes from inside California prisons.
Daniel, known as “Two Scoops,” has previous convictions for attempted murder and assault with a firearm from 1995 and a 2017 guilty plea in Monterey County Superior Court to the murder of fellow inmate Zachary Scott at Salinas Valley State Prison on Oct. 29, 2016.
Daniel was sentenced to 30 years to life in the Scott slaying, and is currently being held at California State Prison, Sacramento, also known as New Folsom.
He was charged by federal prosecutors with killing Scott to aid the Aryan Brotherhood’s racketeering activity and bolster his position with the group.
Documents filed with the plea agreement say Daniel and another inmate attacked Scott, who died of 17 stab wounds to his arms, shoulders, face, abdomen and rib cage.
“Yeah, I did it,” Daniel said as officers approached. “It was me. I did it, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
Court documents say Daniel killed Scott because Scott had failed to carry out the slaying of another inmate Daniel had ordered.
