SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Nearly 18 months after the first of six guilty verdicts, the federal government has made good on its pledge to move some of California’s allegedly most dangerous inmates into the federal prison system.

Five Aryan Brotherhood members — Ronald “Renegade” Yandell, William Sylvester, Jason Corbett, Pat “Big Pat” Brady, and Brant “Two Scoops” Daniel — have been transferred from their state prison cells in the Sacramento area into the federal system. Yandell and Sylvester are currently housed at USP Atwater, while the other three are in prisons in Victorville, records show.

A sixth Aryan Brotherhood member, Danny Troxell, is awaiting sentencing in the same case and if his conviction is upheld he will likely join the others. All six men either pleaded guilty or were found guilty of racketeering and murder, crimes that prosecutors say were committed to benefit the sophisticated prison gang that lords over white inmates across the California prison system.

Since 2019, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of California court have taken aim at the Aryan Brotherhood, with racketeering cases in Fresno and Sacramento. Three other gang members — John Stinson, Kenneth Johnson, and Frank Clement — were convicted of racketeering and murder charges and are awaiting sentencing later this month.

But for a time, it was unclear whether any would go to federal prison, a controversy that began when Daniel pleaded guilty in late 2023 and said he was looking forward to the change of scenery in the federal Bureau of Prisons. All nine men are already serving life in state prison, but federal prosecutors contended they were able to get around security measures to boss around others, order and commit murders and run drug rings from their cells.

When Daniel wasn’t transferred right away, he attempted to get his conviction overturned. What followed was months of pledges by prosecutors, who attempted to get the BOP onboard.

Along the way, prosecutors say that they uncovered additional murder plots involving the defendants. Yandell and Troxell reportedly threatened to kill each other during their trial last year, while Sylvester allegedly hired an undercover ATF agent to kill someone before the trial began. After the trial, Yandell, a former West Contra Costa resident, was charged with attempted murder for allegedly pulling a shank on two prison guards.

The latest drama happened on March 10, when an ATF agent warned Clement and Johnson that the two have been “targeted for assault and/or murder” should they return to a state prison yard. Their attorneys now want to postpone the sentencing to explore the theory that this development proves Clement and Johnson couldn’t have ordered murders on the Aryan Brotherhood’s behalf.

Clement’s sentencing memo summarizes his life as having mostly been sent behind bars, since his early teens, in Oregon and California, then spending much of his adult years in solitary confinement.

“It is easier to believe that people are evil than to try to understand where the behavior came from and how to change that,” Clement’s attorneys concluded.

The attorney later added, “it is evident from this case, how it is easier for the government and the system to lay blame solely on an individual like Frank, than to reflect on the shortcomings of the institutions that have warehoused him for decades and so significantly contributed to where we are today.”

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