Ten months after the case was announced and seven months after the return of a superseding indictment, sentencings have begun in the Columbia, South Carolina case against members of the Rock Hell City Nomads charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, members of nearby chapters of the Red Devils and Southern Gentlemen Motorcycle Clubs and associates of those clubs.

What may be the final trial in the case ended Good Friday with the conviction of Carlos Hernandez for narcotics conspiracy. The government alleged that Hernandez was the source for most of the cocaine and methamphetamine other defendants delivered to a government agent provocateur named Joe Dillulio. Hernandez is now scheduled to be sentenced July 10.

Snitches

Two cooperating witnesses have already been sentenced. James Frederick “Big Fred” Keach, Jr., a former member of the Red Devils Motorcycle Club was sentenced to time served and forfeiture of his motorcycle on March 26 while Hernandez trial was still underway. Keach faced 20 years in prison. Keach began cooperating with prosecutors less than a week after he was arrested. The prosecutor in the case, Jay Richardson, did not detail the extent of Keach’s cooperation in writing.

Trent Allen Brown was sentenced this morning to 24 months in prison and four years of supervised release for the crime of narcotics conspiracy. Brown will remain free to arrange his affairs until May 5. The court recommended that he do his time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Edgefield, South Carolina.

In his motion requesting leniency for Brown, Richardson wrote, “The Government submits that Brown has provided substantial assistance during the course of his cooperation in the cases against his codefendants and his coconspirators.”

Remaining Defendants

All but two of the remaining defendants in the case will be sentenced on May 9 or June 19.

The two exceptions are Dan and Lisa Bifield. Lisa Bifield fired her previous attorney, a man named John Wesley Locklair, on March 18. Locklair was replaced by Louis H. Lang who may or may not move to vacate a guilty plea and a corresponding contract with the government that his client signed on January 3. Lang has until tomorrow to ask Judge Cameron McGowan Currie for more time to review the case before proceeding. Dan Bifield moved to withdraw his guilty plea on February 19. A hearing to argue that motion is scheduled for April 11.

Richard Thrower, Frank Enriquez, Jr, Johanna Looper, Ronald Dean Byrum, Jr, James Rhodus, Bruce Ranson Wilson, Robert David Pryor and Kerry Chitwood are all scheduled to be sentenced on May 9. Mark William Baker, David Channing Oiler and Bruce James Long, who were found guilty by a jury on March 20, are all scheduled to be sentenced on June 19.

In a 12 page motion filed April 2nd, Assistant United States Attorney Julius N. “Jay” Richardson accused Daniel Eugene “Diamond Dan” Bifield of trying “to game the system” by attempting to withdraw his guilty plea. Bifield pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy on January 3.

Bifield’s agreement with the government was unusually one sided. The defendant, who is 61-years-old, agreed to a take a mandatory term of 20 years in prison. He waived “the right to contest either the conviction or the sentence in any direct appeal or other post-conviction action;” and he agreed to frustrate any potential journalistic examination of the case brought against him. He waived “all rights, whether asserted directly or by a representative, to request or receive from any department or agency of the United States any records pertaining to the investigation or prosecution of this case, including without limitation any records that may be sought under the Freedom of Information Act….”

Six weeks later on February 19, Bifield filed a handwritten motion to withdraw his plea on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. In Tuesday’s countermotion Richardson complains that allowing Bifield to be tried for his alleged crimes before a jury of his peers “would waste the limited resources of the prosecution, the Court, and the public defender’s office.”

The federal racketeering case originally titled United States versus Bifield et al. was astoundingly corrupt even for a biker racketeering case. Before they were arrested the defendants were mostly entrapped by government employees. An examination of the public record, which represents much less than one percent of the evidence against the indicted, contains numerous instances in which there would have been no violation of the law without federal instigation. The defendants were charged with “conspiring” to commit hypothetical offenses created out of thin air by the government. Elements of the supposed conspiracy were specifically game-planned in advance to frustrate an entrapment defense. The arrests were both calculatedly punitive in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and exemplified staged police television events. All of the defendants were indentified in mass media accounts as “Hells Angels” because those media were led to that conclusion by police. The indictment itself stinks of superfluous references to that particular motorcycle club even though most of the defendants were not Hells Angels.

Post-Indictment Investigation

Like all motorcycle club cases this one would have failed without a post-indictment “investigation” that used various forms of duress up to and including physical mistreatment to turn alleged co-conspirators into informants. The duress is inseparable from the entrapments. The defendants were charged with violations of federal racketeering statutes because of the life destroying penalties those statutes provide. Defendants who might be sentenced to a year or less in prison by state courts can and are sentenced to decades in prison and forfeiture of everything their lives have amounted to when they are found guilty of exactly the same actions in federal courts.

All racketeering defendants are blackmailed after they are charged. Every federal defendant is coerced by prosecutors into pleading guilty. So many citizens are arrested for so many things that it is no longer practical to allow each defendant a trial. More than 90 percent of all federal defendants plead guilty to something as part of a “plea deal” and they are generally rewarded with reduced punishment.

In the Bifield case, a member of the Red Devils Motorcycle Club named James Frederick “Big Fred” Keach, Jr. was rewarded with a sentence that totaled ten months for helping to convict his fellow defendants. The indictment describes Keach’s crimes as being no less than the people he helped to convict. Keach was treated differently because he ingratiated himself to his tormenters. In the honor driven, proud and defiant world of outlaw motorcycle clubs, most defendants react to government accusations with either defiance or stoic despair. Keach was treated differently because he was willing to roll over, sit-up, shake hands and beg. And, it is obvious from its treatment of him that Keach was indispensible to the government in order to prove accusations the government had already made. No Keach, no case. No post-indictment blackmail, no Keach.

Keach, like all the defendants in this case, was charged with an overwhelming number of crimes – not merely racketeering but numerous other offenses including “racketeering conspiracy.” Overcharging is a standard tactic. The idea is to overwhelm defendants with a catalog of offenses against which they must defend themselves. It is a way of blackmailing a defendant into pleading guilty to just one of his putative crimes against society. In Keach’s case, as a reward for sacrificing his honor, all but his racketeering conspiracy charge was dismissed.

Fewer than ten percent of all federal defendants who will not “deal,” either because they think they have nothing to lose or because they “think” they are actually innocent of vague charges like “conspiracy,” are actually found innocent. Even if they are actually innocent their lives are usually ruined anyway because the emotional and financial costs of defending oneself in a federal case are terrible. Hector “Largo” Gonzalez, for example, who was briefly president of the Mongols Motorcycle Club, fought a government accusation that he was a racketeer for years until the business that his father had left him was gone, until everything he owned was gone and he was too broke to hire his own lawyer. Then he went to prison.

Ham Sandwich Justice

As a matter of fact, the federal judicial system is gamed to give prosecutors an unfair advantage. This national shame is practically common knowledge.

In 1985, after his own indictment, a New York state judge named Sol Wachtler told inquiring reporters that a grand jury could be convinced to “indict a ham sandwich.”

“Ham Sandwich Nation” is a currently popular and recent essay by the distinguished law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds – about the malicious prosecution and subsequent suicide of Reddit founder Aaron Swartz. Reynolds leads his essay with a quote from former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who noticed: “If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows he can choose his defendants.” Within a page or so, Reynolds references Harvey Silverglate’s 2011 book Three Felonies A Day, about the Sovietization of American federal justice and Tim Wu’s 2007 essay in Slate titled “American Lawbreaking.” Wu begins his long story with an illustrative anecdote.

“At the federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York,” Wu writes, “the staff, over beer and pretzels, used to play a darkly humorous game. Junior and senior prosecutors would sit around, and someone would name a random celebrity—say, Mother Theresa or John Lennon. It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you’d see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like ‘false statements’ (a felony, up to five years), ‘obstructing the mails’ (five years), or ‘false pretenses on the high seas’ (also five years). The trick and the skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The, result, however, was inevitable: ‘prison time.’”

The game Wu described is eerily reminiscent of one episode in the Bifield case. During the trial of four of the defendants, the jury heard a tape recorded conversation in which FBI Case Agent Devon Mahoney asks master informant Joseph Dillulio, “How are we going to get these guys, Joe? RICO?”

The legal argument between Dan Bifield and Jay Richardson is maddeningly discordant. Bifield complains that he was physically and emotionally abused, lied to and tricked and that his most noble virtues were cynically exploited. Richardson is mostly content to gloat “Gotcha fool!”

This is how Daniel Bifield describes the events that led to his guilty plea.

The Tale Of Diamond Dan

“My name is Diamond Dan. I have been a Hells Angel for over 37 years and I am a man of respect and honor. I am a fair man and a man of my word. I do not disrespect people and I have manners. I am a proud man, husband and Hells Angel! I am dedicated and loyal to what I love and believe in and nothing can take away or change that.”

“I know our federal government has done some illegal stuff. We are all being set-up and railroaded because of who and what I am. A lot of people including my family and friends are being hurt by this. For the record, we are not guilty of these crimes. We are not an organized crime group. We never have been and we never will be. The only organized crime here is by the federal government! The government entraps us, lies about us and tricks us.”

“I am so sick and tired of all these lies and stories the federal government is always making about us. They don’t care who they hurt or use as long as they get what they want. I feel so bad because of all the people and families who have been ruined by the government. I am completely torn apart by all they have done to my beautiful wife Lisa and by the way they are treating her. She does not deserve this! And, all this has happened to her because of me.”

“My wife has helped so many people by putting on support parties and benefits for men, women and children. A man couldn’t ask for a better wife. She has saved me in so many ways. She has given me and taught me so much! When I came to South Carolina I had nothing. Lisa took care of me, gave me a home, supported me and loved me like no other woman. She gave me a family and a reason to want to live and make it in life. She was always on me to do good. You can’t help but to love and like her.”

“Now I’m fighting for my wife, my club and my life. I am at the point where I don’t care what they do to me. I may spend the rest of my life in prison but I would never sell out the people I love and believe in. I will never turn by back on any of them.”

“The feds have ruined and taken everything we had and worked for. They blew up our house! They searched and destroyed it! And, all they found were seven knives! They didn’t have to do all that. We were told and knew they were coming but we had no idea it would be a set-up. I told the cops over and over that they didn’t have to come blow up our house and destroy it. I told them that we had nothing in there.”

“When I stepped outside with my hands up they (the Swat Team) had five red dots in the middle of my chest. And do you know what I told them? I said, “Go ahead and shoot me.” One of the feds ran up to me and tried to push me hard but I pushed back and held my position. I told them they did not have to do all that. I was more worried about my wife. She was so scared, upset and confused! I wanted to run over and hold her. We hardly had any clothes on but they (Swat) didn’t care.”

“They put us in the hole with no visits, mail, phone calls or recreation. We have no clothes. They refused to give me clean clothes, showers, tooth paste, soap or toilet paper. I had to wipe myself with a towel! I weighed 224 pounds and now I weigh 211. The cells were dirty and nasty and ice cold. There was little food and it sucked. Ask my wife all they did to her and how badly they treated her. All of this was at the orders of the feds.”

“Most likely they will not allow my wife bond and that is really wrong! She cries all the time and is so confused about all that is happening. She doesn’t deserve to be in jail. This hurts me so badly. I only care a little about what they do to me but I do care very much about her and my club. You can mess with me but when it comes to my family and club I will fight back with my life. Our legal system and prison system suck. They just expect everybody to roll over and tell – to make a deal.”

“It hurts me to think I will never see my wife or my family again. I may die in prison for believing in what I do and for being what I am. If that is the case let it be so.”

“A man can only take so much bullshit. A human being doesn’t need to be treated like this. It (these conditions) make it hard for me to defend myself and get things done. And that’s the point! If I were free I could get so many more people involved to help us. And, tell the truth! I can’t say much about the case yet. Hell, I don’t even know about the case myself yet! But, knowing the government I am sure they did a lot of illegal and low life stuff. And, now they are saying I can’t write my wife because of the case.”

“U.S. Attorney Richardson and the FBI had Lisa Bifield sign a proffer in July and August of 2012 but withheld this knowledge and information from me on the day I signed my plea agreement. U.S. Attorney Richardson, the FBI and other law enforcement withheld a statement made by Lisa Bifield on June 7, 2012, the day of our arrest, from me on the day I signed my plea agreement. The U.S. Attorney used my wife, Lisa Bifield, to place me under duress for me to sign a plea deal by threatening to put my wife in prison for 14 years and telling her she would never see her 14-year-old daughter again.”

“The U.S. Attorney pressured us to take this one time offer of a plea deal and only allowed us seven days to decide – starting the day after Christmas. We should have been allowed just as much time as the other co-defendants had to decide their plea deals.”

“When I made the plea agreement I wasn’t aware of an agreement that my wife Lisa Bifield had to testify. If that had been the case I never would have taken the plea deal. I was told by my lawyers that Lisa could admit to things that she did with me in the indictment, as part of her guilty plea for acceptance of personal responsibility. I was also told that if she could testify to anything it would help her to get more time off her sentence, which I did not agree to nor ever will! At this time I asked everybody to leave the room so I could talk to my wife. I told her that I didn’t think she was getting a good deal and I didn’t like the plea deal because they gave her too much time for pleading guilty. I also told her I didn’t want her to ever testify to anything. My wife told me she didn’t know anything to testify about – that she wanted to go home as soon as possible to take care of her daughter and that she didn’t want to die in prison. So, I took the plea deal.”

“My plea agreement was to plead guilty to conspiracy of the RICO Act and to receive 20 years with three years probation; that my wife would plead guilty to the gun count for five years with two years probation; and that she would go to a prison camp. Nobody told me or Lisa that she had to testify. Also, nobody told us of the five years to life with five years probation until we heard it in court.”

“I also should have been allowed to have read my wife Lisa Bifield’s plea agreement since I sacrificed myself, my appeals and my rights.”

Richardson’s Tale

“Dan Bifield was charged with RICO, RICO conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy, narcotics distribution, Hobbs Act robbery, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking and a crime of violence, money laundering, the business of dealing firearms without a license, selling firearms to a felon, transfer of firearms knowing that the firearms would be used in a crime of violence and drug trafficking, and felon in possession of a firearm.”

“In early December of 2012, Dan Bifield’s attorney, Allen Burnside, initiated contact with the Government to inquire about the possibility of a plea deal that would benefit Lisa Bifield. Burnside initially stated that Dan Bifield said he would be willing to plea if the Government dismissed the charges against Mrs. Bifield. After the Government rejected this suggestion, Burnside responded that Dan Bifield may willing to plea if Mrs. Bifield’s liability was limited….”

“Similarly the defendant’s wife, Lisa Bifield, was charged in a variety of counts involving RICO, firearms, narcotics, and money laundering.”

“Lisa Bifield first provided a statement to law enforcement on the day of her arrest, June 7, 2012. Then, after discussions with appointed and retained counsel, Lisa entered into a proffer agreement with the Government. She was debriefed pursuant to that agreement in July and August of 2012. After those debriefings, Lisa’s counsel indicated that she no longer wished to cooperate because the proposed plea to Count 2 (RICO Conspiracy) depended on a Rule 5K motion and failed to assure her of a specific sentence (her counsel suggested she wanted no more than five years). Based on the Government’s estimation, Lisa Bifield’s guilty plea would subject her to a guideline range of approximately 14 years before any departure based on cooperation. Absent a guilty plea, Lisa faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a guideline range in excess of 20 years. When Burnside contacted the Government regarding plea negotiations in December of 2012, Lisa Bifield had previously indicated that she was no longer willing to cooperate and the Government was preparing for trial against her and the remaining defendants.”

“After taking the joint plea offer to his client, Burnside inquired whether the cooperation language for Mrs. Bifield could be removed. The Government explained that the joint plea deal required Mrs. Bifield’s cooperation. Indeed, prior to the entry of the guilty plea, the Government and Burnside were involved in a discussion about the importance of Lisa Bifield cooperating fully and truthfully in order to get the benefit of the plea agreement and to avoid the likely harsh sentence that could result if Lisa breached her cooperation agreement.”

On December 27, 2012, Government counsel, Dan Bifield’s counsel (Burnside and Kathy Evett), Lisa Bifield’s counsel (Wesley Locklair), Special Agent Mahoney and other law enforcement agents met with Dan and Lisa Bifield to allow them the opportunity to discuss the plea offer. The plea offer was discussed with both defendants. Dan and Lisa Bifield then asked to speak with one another in private to discuss the plea offer. Dan and Lisa Bifield then were allowed to speak with Special Agent Mahoney present in the room. In this December 27 meeting, Lisa Bifield and Special Agent Mahoney expressly discussed with Dan Bifield the fact that pursuant to her plea agreement Lisa Bifield would have to testify against the co-defendants, as well as against others. Special Agent Mahoney explained to Dan Bifield that if all defendants pleaded guilty then Lisa might not have to testify. During the discussions, Dan Bifield stated that he did not like that Lisa was going to testify because that was not what “we” do. Lisa assured him that it was she who was testifying and that she needed to cooperate so that she could get the plea deal. Dan responded that they were a package and he did not like her testifying against the Hells Angels. However, Dan stated that if Lisa wanted him to agree to the deal, then he would do so.3 The defendant and Mrs. Bifield signed their respective plea agreements.”

“During the plea hearing on January 3, 2013, this Court determined that the plea was made knowingly and voluntarily by Dan Bifield. It did so based on its extensive, standard questioning of Dan Bifield in which he affirmed, inter alia, that he was satisfied with counsel, that he had not been pressured into pleading, and that he agreed with the factual summary provided by the Government.”

“Pursuant to the Court’s scheduling order, the Government disclosed to trial counsel the cooperating witness’ plea agreements and reports of interviews on January 18, 2012. Additionally, the Government announced in open court the potential witnesses, which included cooperating co-defendants.”

“Dan Bifield filed a handwritten motion to withdraw his Rule 11 guilty plea on February 19, 2013.”

“When the trial court conducts a Rule 11 colloquy and finds the plea to be knowingly and voluntarily entered, absent compelling reasons to the contrary, the validity of the plea and the defendant’s corresponding guilty are deemed to be conclusively established.”

Richardson’s statement that Agent Mahoney was in the room while Dan and Lisa Bifield discussed how he might sacrifice himself for her is a particularly nice touch. Presumably, Mahoney’s testimony as an officer of the court will trump the Bifield’s recollections of their first moments together since their arrests.

Rule 11 Colloquy

The cynical procedure called a Rule 11 colloquy to which Richardson refers in his countermotion requires federal defendants to lie when they make a plea deal.

In a book titled Out Bad, the author describes a Rule 11 colloquy like this:

“How far did you advance in school,” a judge would ask sweetly, or sternly or jocularly, as he or she began the interrogation that verified the “competence” of the confessed criminal.

And before he would answer the wise defendant would always whisper something to his lawyer. And, only after the lawyer whispered back would the defendant dare to say, “High school.” Or, “Ninth grade.” Or, “I dropped out of college.”

“And, are you aware that you may be giving up certain of your rights, like the right to vote or own a gun or serve on a jury?”

Whisper, whisper. “Yeah, probably astronaut is also out of the question,” the lawyer would advise confidentially.

Whisper, whisper, nod. The defendant answers the judge, “Yeah, right.”

“And are you in fact actually guilty?”

Whisper, whisper. Bitter, little laugh. And then the slight smile that means that the defendant is about to turn forever to stone. “Yeah. Guilty.”

The judge would decree that the confessed criminal was “in fact” guilty and then the defense attorney would always say, “Thank you, your honor.”

The prosecutor would always say, “Thank you, your honor.”

That was always the best part: As the Deputy Marshalls led the “convicted” man away in his orange jump suit, in a belly chain and cuffs and sometimes in shackles; as the opposing sides stuffed files back into their expensive leather cases; before they would go out into the hall to smile about last summer in Rome or on the Costa del Sol; the opposing lawyers would always thank the judge.

Blackmail

More foolish questions than a thousand wise men could answer flow from this episode of American justice – this debate over whether Dan Bifield is “in fact” guilty now that everybody has thanked the judge. Richardson seems to think he has “proven” Bifield’s guilt.

One line of questioning in the standard colloquy goes approximately like this:

“I will explain to you your Constitutional rights. Make sure that you understand what they are and that you’re giving all of them up if you enter this plea.

“You have the right to continue to plead not guilty and go to trial. You could have a speedy and public trial before me sitting as a judge or before a jury. If you had a jury trial, your attorney and the United States attorney would select twelve people from the community. They would sit in that jury box and listen to the evidence against you. They could not convict you unless all twelve of them were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that every element of this charge was true.

“You would have the right to see and hear and confront and cross examine the witnesses against you. You could use the subpoena power of the court to bring witnesses into court to testify for you. You could take the stand and testify or remain silent. I would instruct the jury that they could not infer that you were guilty because of your silence.

“Do you understand all those rights? And do you give each of them up?”

One foolish question that flows from this case is, “Why would Dan Bifield give up his rights.” Why did the judge think he renounced his rights? What did Richardson think?

The answer is obvious. Richardson’s motion even alludes to it. Dan Bifield, a man of a certain age, fell on his sword to save the love of his life. He sacrificed himself for her.

Which immediately invites another naïve question which is, “Why did he have to do that.” And, the obvious answer is that the great weakness Mahoney and Richardson found in Diamond Dan Bifield was Lisa; as in Room 101, O’Brien found Winston Smith’s great weakness was rats. Bifield was mistreated in jail and he was terrified that his wife was being mistreated too.

There is no human decency, compassion or honor in Richardson’s motion. After blackmailing Bifield into pleading guilty with implied threats to his wife, Richardson justifies his accomplishment with numerous references to obscure judgments of the law.

To a fool, this example of American justice seems simple. To a fool, Richardson himself seems guilty of violating South Carolina Code 16-17-640. That law says: “Any person who verbally or by printing or writing or by electronic communications: (1) accuses another of a crime or offense; (2) exposes or publishes any of another’s personal or business acts, infirmities, or failings; or (3) compels any person to do any act, or to refrain from doing any lawful act, against his will; with intent to extort money or any other thing of value from any person, or attempts or threatens to do any of such acts, with the intent to extort money or any other thing of value, shall be guilty of blackmail.”

And what thing is more valuable than freedom? Unless it is love.

About once a day, Someone contacts me to ask why I refused to publish his comment. Some guys get fairly irate about it. Some people seem a little hurt.

The Aging Rebel gets between 2,000 and 3,000 spam comments every day. The worst day the site got about 4,000 spam comments. Some spam comments look a lot like regular comments. Here are a couple of examples from the 46 spam comments that came in during the time it took to write the first two sentences of this story.

Real Live Spam

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Apple now has Rhapsody as an app, which is a great start, but it is currently hampered by the inability to store locally on your iPod, and has a dismal 64kbps bit rate. If this changes, then it will somewhat negate this advantage for the Zune, but the 10 songs per month will still be a big plus in Zune Pass’ favor.

The above two comments are intended to sell a little but mostly to defeat standard discussion moderation procedures. Generally, if you have commented on this site before and your comment has been approved then all your subsequent comments will be immediately approved. The above comments are intended to seem like actual comments so if I just glance at them and approve them the spammers will be able to make any comments they want in the future without my interference. Here are a couple more.

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This last email then asks readers to click a link to an online store. Some spam comments are hundreds of words long and contain dozens of links to granny porn sites, international pharmacies and numerous, obvious scams.

What To Do

There are not enough hours in the day to actually examine all these comments and separate out the valid comments from the lists of links to the “best” payday loans sites. So basically, an off site robot identifies the comments that come from obvious spammers and also identifies possible spam. If your internet address is close to that of a known spammer, or if you are commenting for the first time, or from a new computer or device, or you haven’t commented for awhile, or if you are on a list that I have assembled of potentially troublesome commenters your comment goes to the “moderation queue” and stays there until I manually review and okay the comment.

The commenters whose words are routinely moderated include suspected trolls, obnoxious cops and commenters who have become a lightening rod. For example, comments by a young guy named Brandon Sharp are always moderated. Comments by three or four people who are pugnaciously unhappy with their club’s president are routinely moderated. These posters are not banned but I want to see what they are saying before they say it on this site.

Two people have been blacklisted in the last four and a half years. For example, all known aliases and Internet Protocol addresses of a man named Mike Yevtuck are listed on a “blacklist.” His comment attempts are automatically deleted. I don’t doubt he will be back but when he is his comments will first go to the moderation queue.

Your Comment

Comments and Spam are examined at least every two hours from either a mobile device or a desktop computer between approximately 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Pacific seven days a week. Sometimes I just don’t look for hours and hours and hours – particularly if I am in the middle of the Mojave on my motorcycle, or I’m having other fun, or I’m intoxicated or asleep.

Very long comments are more difficult to check on a smart phone than very brief comments and all comments are difficult to moderate on a two inch by five inch phone. The “approve” “delete comment” and “this is spam” fields are very close together on a little phone screen. Sometimes my thumb hits delete when I wanted to touch approve. Then I have to go to a computer with a real keyboard to fix what I have done. Sometimes, your comment may sit in trash for up to ten hours.

That is why your comment was not approved. All due respect. My apologies.

Okay?

Rebel

The Hells Angels racketeering trial in Columbia, South Carolina ended almost a month ago but the arguments continue to echo.

On March 14, a jury found three members of the Rock Hell City Nomads charter of the Hells Angels, Mark William Baker, David Channing Oiler and Bruce James Long (pictured above), guilty of multiple charges including racketeering conspiracy and narcotics conspiracy. A fourth member of the club, Thomas McManus Plyler, was found innocent of all the charges against him. Now Long’s attorney, Joshua Snow Kendrick, has filed a motion asking the judge in that trial, Cameron McGowan Currie, to either acquit Long of racketeering conspiracy and narcotics conspiracy or grant him a new trial.

The government investigation that led to a racketeering indictment against a score of people would have been fruitless except for the efforts of a paid informer named Joe Dillulio.

Dillulio

The investigation began as an attempt to “get” a long time Hells Angel named Daniel “Diamond Dan” Bifield. After spending decades in prison Bifield, who was from Connecticut, was released in South Carolina. He came under almost immediate government surveillance. As his road name suggests, Bifield has a fondness for jewelry. And, an FBI agent named Devon Mahoney recruited Dillulio after seeing Bifield walk into Dillulio’s jewelry store.

Dillulio presented himself to Bifield and Bifield’s friends as a small time criminal with connections to more important criminals in New York. He then proceeded to tempt and entrap all the defendants in a series of schemes. Dillulio sought drugs and guns from his victims and asked for help from some of them to launder money from an imaginary drug stick-up.

Kendrick and the other defense attorneys hammered away at Dillulio throughout the trial. Kendrick argued that none of the alleged crimes would have occurred without Dillulio’s subterfuge. There is precedent in the Fourth Judicial District that a government employee like Dillulio cannot be considered a coconspirator under the racketeering statutes and that precedent led to the acquittal of all the defendants on racketeering charges.

The prosecution and the defense argued throughout the trial over what Dillulio’s entrapments actually meant. The prosecution told the jury that Dillulio merely opened a window into the way that Hells Angels charter conducted its criminal business so that outsiders could look inside. The defenders, and Kendrick in particular, argued that the gun and drug crimes only occurred because Dillulio tempted, begged and bribed the defendants into cooperating with him. In the end, the jury seemed ambivalent about who to believe but they sided with the prosecution about the conspiracy charges.

Now Kendrick is asking Currie to overrule the jury.

The Motion

Kendrick’s motion on behalf of Bruce Long is technical and does not dispute that Dillulio led his client astray. It does dispute that Dillulio led Long into a drug and racketeering conspiracy. It argues:

“The Government presented evidence that Long delivered drugs to confidential informant Joe Dillulio on eight occasions between August 5, 2011 and December 16, 2011. There was also a failed attempt to obtain drugs for Dillulio on February 6, 2012. The Government presented no evidence that these transactions were anything other than ordinary drug deliveries made at the request of its own informant. There was no evidence Long ever offered to deliver drugs or was bringing the drugs in the course of an organized pattern or arrangement of deals. In fact, the deals had no relationship to each other beyond the fact they were all made at the request of Dillulio.”

“Because the deals were not related to the extent required by the precedent interpreting the RICO concept of “related”, the evidence on relatedness presented by the Government was not sufficient to send Count Two to the jury and the Court should enter a verdict of acquittal on that count.”

“More troubling is the lack of evidence presented on the “continuity” element required by RICO. RICO was not intended to cover garden variety claims of criminal activity. It is well-settled that RICO is a unique action concerned with organized, long-term, habitual criminal activity.”

“The Supreme Court was clear in describing congressional intent (when Congress passed the racketeering statutes in 1970.) . ‘Predicate acts extending over a few weeks or months and threatening no future criminal conduct do not satisfy this requirement: Congress was concerned in RICO with long-term criminal conduct.’ Id. If continuity cannot be established over a substantial period of time, it must depend on whether the threat of continuity is demonstrated. Id.”

“In the instant case, the Government has presented evidence that Long was involved in criminal activity for a period of six months. There is no evidence Long was involved in criminal activity prior to August of 2011 and no evidence Long was involved in criminal activity after February of 2012. In relation to Count 2, there is no evidence Long was involved in any agreement to commit any racketeering acts outside of this six month period. Six months is not the substantial amount of time required for a RICO pattern. In addition, the Government’s failure to show any evidence of continued criminal activity showed there was an end point to Long’s activity. Though Dillulio’s schemes continued on, Long quit participating in them.”

“However, there was no evidence anyone else was involved in the alleged agreement between Long and Dillulio. While the Government claimed co-defendant Dan Bifield may have suggested the sale of the guns to Dillulio, there was no evidence that suggestion had anything to do with the New York robbery. One of the many tapes presented by the Government reflected Bifield informing Dillulio that Long may have an AK-47 rifle to sell Dillulio. The evidence later reflected Long never possessed an AK-47. He did discuss an SKS rifle with Dillulio, which he later sold to Dillulio. There was no evidence of any agreement between Long and Bifield, or any other defendant, to facilitate the sale of the SKS. It was simply a transaction between Long and government informant Dillulio.”

“The money laundering scheme followed an even less conspiratorial pattern. This matter came about at the behest of Dillulio, who discussed the money laundering with Long. There was no one else involved in the transactions between Long and Dillulio. In fact, though Dillulio was engaged in similar money laundering activity with other defendants, he always insisted on secrecy. His acts with Long were entirely compartmentalized from acts with other defendants.”

In other words, no Dillulio, no crimes. The commonality among all the charges in this case was not membership in a motorcycle club. What was common in the alleged crime wave was the FBI snitch.

The apparently ongoing racketeering case in Columbia, South Carolina took a strange turn today. Former lead defendant Dan Bifield and his wife Lisa, who is also a defendant in the case, appeared in court together for a two hour motion hearing. Some of that hearing was held in camera – which is the Latin phrase used to describe secret justice.

The result of the hearing was that both the Bifields have agreed to plead guilty; although Dan Bifield filed a ten-page, handwritten list of 56 “issues” he has with the case so far; and the plea agreement Lisa Bifield signed on December 27 was finally made public. It is anybody’s guess where this will lead or what implications any of this might have on future, similar cases.

Dan Bifield

Formally, what Dan Bifield did today was withdraw his motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Bifield signed a very one-sided (in favor of the prosecution) guilty plea last December 27 and pled guilty in court on January 3. After learning the details of his wife’s plea deal Dan Bifield moved to withdraw his guilty plea on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct on February 29. This morning he withdrew that motion.

The prosecution had Bifield over a barrel. A clause on page seven of Lisa’s ten page deal states: “This plea agreement is expressly contingent upon the court accepting Co-Defendant Daniel Eugene Bifield’s guilty plea to Count 2 of the Superseding Indictment.” In other words, if Dan didn’t tow the line the unscrupulous prosecutor in the case, a man named Julius N. “Jay” Richardson, promised “expressly” to hurt Lisa.

Bifield remains furious at his treatment and he is obviously trying to wrangle an appeal. There are several statements in his list of “issues” that are directed at the world at large.

One issue rebuts a statement made by FBI Agent Devon Mahoney that Dan Bifield agreed to let his wife testify against her fellow defendants. Bifield writes, “When we were at our plea agreement (conference) they allowed FBI Agent Devon Mahoney to stay in the room with us. When I asked my lawyer (Allen B. Burnside) about this because I did not want him in the room with us, we were told that whatever was said in this room could not be used against us. We were told that whatever was said had to stay in this room and could not be repeated. Well, not only did Agent Devon Mahoney make a statement concerning things said in that room. He also lied about what was said in that room. I have never approved, sanctioned or told my wife Lisa Bifield to testify against the Hells Angels, members or anybody else. Lisa Bifield or Agent Devon Mahoney never expressly told me that Lisa would have to testify against her codefendants or anybody else. I never said we were a package or any of that other stuff FBI Agent Devon Mahoney said! He is a liar.”

The first three issues in Bifield’s list describe what he is after despite what happened in court today. “(1) Dismissal of all charges against Lisa Bifield and Dan Bifield. (2) Reasons – Prosecutorial misconduct, violation of our constitutional rights, unbecoming behavior of federal law enforcement officials and cruel and unusual punishment. (3) I want all issues put into the record for appeal purposes.”

Lisa Bifield

Lisa Bifield had voided her plea deal when she refused to testify against her fellow defendants. That plea deal was modified today to allow her to remain silent. Overall, it is a draconian agreement. Her previous lawyer, a man named John Wesley Locklair, must be an idiot.

The agreement, signed six months after the first indictment and three months after a superseding indictment, makes multiple references to an “ongoing investigation.” The deal all but brags that the harsh treatment of the defendants was intended to gather the proof the prosecution needed to substantiate charges the prosecution had already made. And it stinks of the shameless bullying Mahoney and Richardson used to get their “win.”

One passage requires Lisa Bifield to agree “to submit to such polygraph examinations as may be requested by the Government and agrees that any such examinations shall be performed by a polygraph examiner selected by the Government. Defendant further agrees that her refusal to take or her failure to pass any such polygraph examination to the Government’s satisfaction will result, at the Government’s sole discretion, in the obligations of the Government within the Agreement becoming null and void.”

The government’s, or as Richardson would spell it Government’s, with a big Gee, actions in this case have been reprehensibly Stalinist. The judge in the case, Cameron McGowan Currie, has allowed Richardson to get as dirty as he wants to get his victory. The case should be retried.

The Devils Ride cablecast its fourteenth episode and ended its second “season” last Monday. If that’s it, it will have been the show’s schizophrenia that killed it.

The show began as a supposed real look inside a real motorcycle club – “a place,” as one of Hunter Thompson’s early admirers put it, “few of us would dare to go.” It was intended to be a cheap show that would commodify an interesting and undervalued counterculture. But most of the real action was either washed and spun dried or ignored: A club prospect and members of the production crew mugged a passing photographer, the show’s star turned out to be married to a cop, other clubs in San Diego told the Laffing Devils, the family club at the center of the show, to disappear.

Let’s Do A Show

The plots were ludicrous and they could only be advanced with voice over narration and “confessional” style interviews with key cast members in the manner of Survivor and Big Brother. The one on ones, usually in black and white and probably filmed well after the fact, sort of explained to viewers what a better drama would have, you know, dramatized. The show might have been better if the producers, a company named Bischoff-Hervey and a guy Steve Stockman had simply turned The Devils Ride into a drama based on true events like Australia’s Brothers In Arms or Sons of Anarchy. Kurt Sutter was right, by the way. One of the shots in the opening montage of every episode of The Devils Ride is a blatant rip off of an image in the FX show’s opening. But Bischoff, Hervey and Stockman were too gutless and lame to admit their biker fantasies were made up. Or, giving them all the benefit of the doubt, maybe the production company was contractually obligated to Discovery to cough up fourteen episodes of a reality show about what started as a real motorcycle club.

The club itself ceased to be real last summer when the San Diego Confederation of Clubs kicked the Laffing Devils to the curb and pronounced a lifetime ban on all the club’s officers. The producers ignored the actual and interesting story in that, which was what happens when a bunch of rude Hollywood bozos stick their noses into the MC world. Instead Bischoff-Hervey and temporary series star Thomas Gipsy Quinn invented an entirely imaginary motorcycle club called the Sinister Mob Syndicate. The Laffing Devils became an entirely imaginary club as well last June. The names and insignia of both clubs are now commercially trademarked as for-profit brands.

Five Hours Lost Forever

I watched five of the fourteen episodes: The first episode last May titled “The Brotherhood;” the final episode of the first season last June titled “Fallen Devil,” a Fluffernutter sandwich about Quinn and his Sinister Mobsters; “First Blood” the first episode when the show returned this February without Quinn – who had been arrested on suspicion of pedophilia during the hiatus; and the thirteenth and fourteenth episodes called “Enemy Within” and “War Is Now” which ran back to back on April 8th.

I tried to approach each episode with an open mind. Now, after almost a year, the nicest thing I can think to say about this monstrosity was, I always liked the theme song.

Most of the last two episodes were prefabricated, fatuous, amateurish and inane melodrama that made me feel embarrassed for all the people who got paid behind this homemade comic book. I might not have much money but at least I won’t be appearing in this thing for the next hundred years. Piled on top of the grade school drama were incidents from the consensual reality in which most of us believe we exist: The photographer mugging, the furious Mongol who appeared for a few fleeting seconds last year and, this season, real glimpses of two real people named Rob and Melissa Johnston in the angry, ugly, sad and very private moments of their disillusionment with one other. I didn’t want to see the private hell of Knucklehead and the pretty girl with the sleeve of tattoos but that was all the producers could think to show me.

Let’s Blow Up A Trailer

The show was crazy like that to the very end when the action-film style explosion of a dilapidated and empty trailer filmed from multiple camera angles was quickly followed by a black and white long shot of Sandman dressed in a suit, looking small beside his very tall lawyer, the two of them looking small together in front of a mountain of grey blocks in downtown San Diego called the Hall of Justice. I wanted to look away from all that too.

If there is anyone who might for some reason be interested, and who does not yet know, because the show did not have the huevos to tell its viewers what was going on, Sandman was arrested for multiple counts including attempted murder after he broke into Melissa’s home last Christmastime and stabbed her guest in the back. Probably they will not be getting back together. At least I didn’t have to want to look away as their children were trotted out to appear in this horrifying flop. Probably Sandman is looking at a little stretch. Probably, even if for some reason The Devils Ride returns, both the husband and the wife are out of the show that went out of its way to portray him as dangerously and impulsively violent.

I would have liked to have watched more episodes than I did, because if the show was only a little better, it would have been a delight to mock, but I could not. Within five minutes something would always make me feel too embarrassed to watch.

There were some nice moments in the show this late winter and early spring. Some of the Sinister Mobsters talked the talk pretty good. Several of them seemed like guys in a motorcycle club. I would have liked to have seen more of that. I would have liked to have seen Ralph “Rockem” Randolph call a prospect at three in the morning and demand a pizza, from his favorite pizzeria in Phoenix. The show could have used moments like that. But there were none because the production kept getting in its own way; because it kept trying to brazen its way out of its own trash can full of secrets and lies.

So, it is what it was.

Boulder City, Nevada Police Chief and bully Thomas Finn will probably be fired when he reports back to work on Monday and he is not taking that well.

Finn’s woes began last June when he decided to use his police powers to bully members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. The Mongols chose Boulder City as the destination for their national run. The Mongols were accompanied by a local lawyer named Stephen Stubbs who had filed a federal civil rights suit on behalf of the Southern Nevada Confederation of Clubs. The suit complains about the multiple incidents of harassment, intimidation and other abuses by Las Vegas area police departments. Finn tried to cover his own tracks by destroying some of the records related to the harassment of the Mongols.

Finn tried to bully Stubbs into silence with a defamation law suit. Stubbs won that legal battle, was awarded $17,000 in damages and began garnishing Finn’s wages. Finn earns about $185,000 in salary and benefits from Boulder City and he gets another $109,000 in retirement income from his previous employer, the city East Brunswick, New Jersey.

The Victim Finn

After losing civil cases to Stubbs and a Boulder City cop named Dan Jennings, Finn kept complaining that he was not a bully but rather a victim. And a rat. He filed ethics complaints with the Nevada Attorney General against Boulder City’s Mayor, the City Manager and a City Councilman. He also filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in which he claimed he is about to be fired not because he is a shameless bully that not even other cops can stand, not because he is a fool whose department lost an M-16, but because he is Catholic. He will probably file another suit this month against Boulder City after he is officially thrown out of his office.

Finn has also learned a little about how journalism works during his time of troubles. He complained on-camera to the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, KLAS, “I’ve got 35 years without a verbal reprimand, no discipline in my file. I’ve never been charged with doing anything illegal, not even a policy violation. For them to now destroy my reputation in this way, and take pleasure in doing so, I’m just standing up. I am not going to let that happen.” Finn acts like a man who believes his own lies because he hears them coming out of his mouth.

The Mormons

Finn was back on KLAS this week talking to the station’s “Chief Investigative Reporter,” a man named George Knapp. He told Knapp that he is a victim of anti-Catholic bias by Mormons. Until recent decades, Nevada was a largely Mormon state. About 16 percent of the residents of Boulder City are Mormons and many city officials are Mormons.

“They are trying to blame everything on me,” Finn told Knapp. “I’m surprised they haven’t blamed the Lindbergh kidnapping on me, but I’m sure that’s coming.”

Fortunately for truth and justice, Finn only knows a little about how journalism works. He has managed to attract attention to himself and he has managed to portray himself as a victim to a television guy who needs an attention grabbing story. But Finn really does not appear sympathetic on-camera. The Las Vegas metropolitan area has been economically devastated in the last five years and he might find it difficult to convince area residents that anybody who makes $300,000 a year is a victim. Finn isn’t going to get his job back no matter what he claims on TV. And, the best Finn can hope for is that his fantastic claims of victimhood will eventually attract all the Vegas news sharks.

If he had the sense to come in out of the rain Finn would understand that more press scrutiny is the last thing he wants. You can watch the KLAS video below.

8 News NOW

Rebel has returned from Phoenix and will probably soon begin work on a story tenatively titled “Worst Motorcycle Ride Ever.” The story will feature hurricane force winds, the mother of all bee stings, missed connections, a dust storm, rain and a motorcycle accident. In the mean time another really important story, the advance notice for the second season premier of The Devils Ride, titled  “Devils Ride Version 2.0” has been corrected.

Click the link to read the corrected version of this major story.

Boulder City, Nevada fired Police Chief Thomas Finn when he returned from a three-month-long, paid medical leave yesterday morning. No one was surprised. Boulder City named Finn’s putative replacement, a Vegas Metro Deputy Chief named Bill Conger, acting chief March 13.

While on leave, Finn filed ethics complaints against three of the Boulder City Politicians who fired him and filed a religious discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In that complaint which is still pending, Finn alleged he had been unfairly criticized because he is Roman Catholic and most of his bosses are Mormons.

Finn also had a press release ready yesterday. City manager David Fraser “offered me the opportunity to resign my position, which I immediately declined,” Finn wrote. “I was then advised that my employment with the City of Boulder City as Chief of Police was terminated.” Fraser and City Attorney Dave Olsen then watched as Finn cleaned out his desk. “I have, for the most part, enjoyed a rewarding 32-year career, fourteen of those years as a chief of police,” Finn wrote. He added that he intended “to make Boulder City a better place to live and work.”

Mongols And Stubbs

Finn got into trouble last June when he decided to bully members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club while they were in his town on vacation. The Mongols had hired a lawyer named Stephen Stubbs to mediate any possible disputes with city officials and Finn was allegedly almost as rude to Stubbs as he was to the Mongols.

Stubbs accused Finn of multiple felonies and misdemeanors and urged city officials to investigate those charges in October. Finn then tried to sue Stubbs, Olsen and others into silence by filing a defamation lawsuit against his critics on November 21, 2012. Stubbs accused Finn of filing a nuisance suit to silence his critics. A judge dismissed Finn’s suit and ordered the Chief to pay Stubbs’ the cost of defending himself.

On November 29, the Boulder City Council voted to have Stubbs’ allegations against Finn investigated by the Nevada Attorney General. The findings of that investigation were then forwarded to the Clark County District Attorney and remain a closely guarded secret.

On December 11, the City Council ordered an audit of the Police Department by an “outside agency.” The International City/County Management Association’s Center for Public Safety Management completed the audit last month. Among other things, the audit discovered a missing M-16. Finn called the audit a “hack job.”

Finn had been Boulder City Police Chief since 2006. He had been on paid leave since January 16. Boulder City officials had no comment on the firing other than to say Boulder City had “separated employment” with Finn. The Boulder City Review has reported that Finn demanded a $250,000 buy out to go away quietly but the city refused.

Stephen “Bowtie” Stubbs (pictured above), the Las Vegas lawyer who represented the Mongols Motorcycle Club’s legal interests while they were vacationing in Boulder City last June, announced some specifics about that harassment campaign yesterday.

The harassment was the idea of former Boulder City Police Chief Thomas Finn. Finn apparently thought the bikers were an easy and unsympathetic target for his neurotic rage, or his inner demons or whatever drove the man to pick on a big pack of motorcycle tourists. Finn is an advocate of “proactive policing.” Maybe that’s it. Proactive policing is a dark art, in which “professional police” use their “experience and training” to decide who is naughty and who is nice before the naughty ones do something naughty – like rape your grandmother, or eat your dog, or smoke a joint or jaywalk or loiter or talk back.

Finn was fired Monday because he couldn’t admit he was wrong. The Mongols National Run started his long self-humiliation. Finn’s is a complicated and absurd tale that doesn’t need to be repeated in detail again. In a nutshell, he appears to have committed a couple of felonies, lost a couple of lawsuits, tried to bully people who disagreed with him, filed some ethics complaints and complained of religious discrimination. This attracted more attention to him than was wise and pretty soon Boulder City officials noticed he was doing a bad job. Unfortunately, like a man who drinks to forget he has a drinking problem, Finn is still chatting up television and print reporters in and around Sin City. He seems to think he is a sympathetic hero because he is a cop. What may eventually dawn on Finn is that he is such a loathsome man that not even his friends can be bothered to arrange an intervention to convince him to stop – just stop.

Now the Vegas press is lining up to video record every word this guy says. Finn thinks the press loves him because they are all on his side. That’s not what makes Finn a compelling story. Reporters love Finn because he is a nut and people love to read about nuts.

This is how it started.

By The Numbers

About 250 Mongols rode into Boulder City June 22nd and were met by about 250 uniformed and an undetermined number of plain clothes policemen representing the Boulder City Police Department, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, North Las Vegas police, Henderson, Nevada police, the Nevada Highway Patrol, California Highway Patrol, Arizona Highway Patrol, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Finn later told Ben Frederickson of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that the army he enlisted was not disproportionate to the threat. “Well there were too many cops in town. Nothing happened,” Finn explained to Frederickson. “Well of course nothing happened. Because there were so many cops in town.”

The police welcoming party issued a total of 27 traffic citations and three misdemeanor citations to members of the motorcycle club or the club’s guests. That’s it. The infractions carried potential penalties of $8,849 which amounts to $35.40 per cop. Four traffic offenses stuck and the offenders were fined a total of $288 which works out to about a buck fifteen per cop.

The other 23 traffic tickets and the three misdemeanors were dismissed.

The Horror, The Horror

Apparently, nobody associated with the motorcycle club actually did much wrong because the police had to make up crimes. The dismissed citations included:

Seventeen visitors were cited for illegally high handlebars. However, the riders were all from out of state, the handlebars were legal at home and because only the federal government has jurisdiction over conflicting laws between states, the handlebar tickets were all unconstitutional. A citation for an improperly displayed license plate was dismissed for the same reason.

A jaywalking ticket was dismissed because at the time the road was still under construction and it had no marked, pedestrian crossways.

A Mongol who was detained without a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” was arrested for “obstructing a police officer” when he refused to answer police questions after identifying himself. Nevada law requires “Terry Stop” detainees to identify themselves and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Nevada law in 2004. But, you are not obliged to have a conversation with your police harasser, even in Nevada. He was the only Mongol arrested that weekend.

A charge of failing to pull over and stop after activation of a police light bar was dismissed after the traffic judge saw a video of the traffic stop posted on YouTube by Chief Finn.

Finally, a club member’s wife was detained because she is a middle-aged Xicana and the police were looking for a middle-aged Mexican woman. He husband remarked the obvious, “This is fucking bullshit,” to the investigating officer who then charged the man for swearing in public and detained him. That charge was also dismissed.

Brian Brewer, a member of the San Diego charter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and a prisoner at the California State Prison at Centinela, was denied compassionate release again last week.

California corrections officials declined, “to recommend to the court that the prisoner’s sentence be recalled. The Board finds the conditions under which the prisoner would be released or receive treatment would pose a threat to public safety due to the extent of his continued mobility and his validation as a member of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club.”

Brewer has Stage IV lung cancer. The clinical term “Stage IV” describes a cancer that has spread to distant areas of the body. Brewers disease has spread to his lymph nodes and bones. His condition is painful and is usually, although not necessarily, incurable. Recent, experimental treatments have been found to be effective against advanced lung cancer but Brewer will not find those treatments in a California prison.

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges ordered California Governor Jerry Brown to reduce California’s prison population. It was the latest skirmish in a long running dispute in which the courts have held health care in California prisons to be so inadequate that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

The Back Story

Brian Brewer was convicted of stealing $1,700 from a Northridge, California credit union in a takeover robbery on April 16, 2002. The case against him was weak and circumstantial. Marked bills taken in the robbery were never recovered and Brewer had an alibi. However prosecutors were able to prove he was a Hells Angel. In 2005 he was convicted of four counts of second degree robbery and three counts of false imprisonment with a “three-strikes” enhancement. He was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in August 2005. Appeals were denied in 2005 and 2006. He has consistently maintained his innocence.

Brewer’s case has become an often-cited example of what is wrong with California’s three strikes law.

His warden, officials within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and a prison physician have all supported his release. Earlier this year, 5,322 people petitioned California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris to support Brewer’s release. She declined.

Harris, who is very politically ambitious, was most recently in the news when President Barack Obama called her the “best-looking attorney general in the country.” After a feminist backlash, Obama called Harris to apologize.

It looks like some version of American Chopper, the reality motorcycle soap opera about an unhappy father and son who got rich and famous building ridiculous bikes, may be coming back and the show is hiring.

On April 12th, Orange County Choppers’ Facebook page announced:

“Orange County Choppers is back at it again! We are about to begin production on a new TV series for a new network. But before we begin, we need a new Creative Director – someone who will work alongside Paul Senior (both on and off camera), building the best custom motorcycles in the world. So, if you are skilled, creative, outgoing, fun and think you can withstand Sr.’s over-the-top personality, demanding style, and sometimes relentless criticism, then we want to hear from you!

“Send an email to getajobatOCC@gmail.com with your resume & location. Also include a recent photo and a brief explanation of why you would be the perfect person to appear on the new show as the new Creative Director for Orange County Choppers. Feel free to include photos of work you’ve done or any other material you think we need to see.”

American Chopper

American Chopper debuted on the Discovery Channel at the height of the custom V-Twin boom in March 2003. It presented custom motorcycles as a kind of modern art and portrayed the men who built the bikes as being as temperamental and high strung as fashion designers. The principal divas were a bike builder in Orange County New York named Paul Teutul and his son Paul Teutul, Jr.

The show quickly became a hit on Discovery. It moved to another Discovery network named TLC (originally The Learning Channel) in 2007. Paul Jr. was fired by his father and started his own custom bike business in 2008. The show was cancelled by TLC in February 2010. At the time, the network issued a statement that read “The Teutuls will always be a part of the Discovery family and we congratulate them on a tremendously successful series run.” Five months later that network announced the show would be reborn as American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior. That incarnation lasted two seasons and concluded with an episode titled “Chopper Live: The Revenge” last December.

Pilgrim Studios

The new show will be produced by American Copper’s original production company, Pilgrim Studios. Founded by Craig Piligian, a one time producer of the CBS reality series Survivor, Pilgrim is probably the leading producer of reality content for television. The company’s shows include Ghost Hunters, Dirty Work and The Ultimate Fighter.

A casting notice on Pilgrim’s website asks “Are you Paul Senior’s right hand man?” The notice explains that Orange County Choppers, “needs some fresh blood – someone who will work alongside Paul Senior, running the shop and helping to build the best custom motorcycles in the world. This is a full-time job working with O.C.C. on and off camera. It doesn’t matter what your specialties are in the motorcycle world. As long as you KNOW the world of choppers, are outgoing, fun and think you can withstand Senior’s onslaught when he’s angry, then we want to hear from you!”

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, pctured above, has declined to prosecute former Boulder City, Nevada Police Chief Thomas Finn for covering his tracks during the Mongols national run.

Finn exploited his opportunity to bully the Mongols when the club came to Finn’s town south of Las Vegas last June. He assembled a police force of at least 250 sworn officers and game planned the greeting he would offer the club. Two weeks before the event, Finn emailed Municipal Court Judge Victor Miller and City Attorney Dave Olsen: “There will be several dozen law enforcement agencies working in BC this weekend for the Mongols event. We are taking a zero tolerance approach with them and all the agencies will be citing them into our municipal court of ordinance violations, traffic violations and other misdemeanors. Is there a specific date you want us to use for a court appearance?

“Also, as part of our zero tolerance approach, all the law enforcement agencies have asked if our court and prosecutor would consider ‘no deals’ when the misdemeanors are adjudicated. Doing so would make it clear to the ‘Mongol Miscreants’ that Boulder City does not tolerate bad behavior.”

Fire Up The Shredders

Finn then ordered the city-wide cover-up which Wolfson just declared to be legal. In an email sent to 31 city employees, Finn wrote: “Lieutenant Albowicz made an excellent suggestion to have all emails related to the preparations we are making for the Mongols event deleted from our computers. If they submit a records request for them it would obviously show our hand and divulge the strategies and staffing levels we need to keep confidential. Therefore please delete any and all emails related to the event immediately.”

After learning that Finn had ordered employees to destroy public documents in order to frustrate a “records request,” Stephen Stubbs, the Mongols attorney, asked Wolfson and the Boulder City Council to investigate Finn.

The confrontation between Stubbs and Finn eventually led to Finn’s termination as Boulder City Chief last week.

No Intent

Wolfson said Tuesday that he thinks Finn intended to prevent the “accidental distribution” of “sensitive information” but did not intend to destroy public records.

The same day Finn told Las Vegas television reporter George Knapp “I’ve said all along that I did nothing wrong and that I did my job, which was to keep the city safe. I knew in my heart and mind that I did not break any laws.”

Knapp, who has become an apologist for Finn in the last month, reported that Finn was “buoyed by the news.”

Four months after the fact, the Arizona Department of Public Safety finally named the Iron Brotherhood members who attacked a civilian in a Prescott bar last Christmas.

The assailants were Phoenix Police Department Community Action Officer Eric “Guido” Amato and an Ajo, Arizona ambulance service supervisor named Greg “Top Gun” Kaufmann. The victim was 23-year-old Justin Stafford of Glendale, Arizona. Stafford was intoxicated and was attacked because he asked Iron Brotherhood chapter president and Prescott Valley Police Chief Bill “Tarzan” Fessler about his vest. An Iron Brotherhood Sergeant at Arms and DPS officer named Bryce “Deuce” Bigelow told DPS investigators that Stafford also made fun of the way Fessler danced.

The names appear in a 2,196 page document dump released by the DPS yesterday. You can download and read the documents for yourself at the Prescott Daily Courier website.

More Names

Reports in the released documents indicate that Fessler and the Iron Brotherhood Whiskey Row chapter vice-president, a former Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant and Partners Against Narcotics Trafficking Commander named Bill “Mongo” Suttle, obstructed justice and made false statements to investigating officers. Suttle resigned from the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office on March 17th. Fessler quit his job on March 18. The documents recommend that Amato and Kaufmann be charged with assault and disorderly conduct. The investigators also recommended that Stafford be charged with disorderly conduct.

Former Yavapai County Sheriff’s Captain Marc Schmidt, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Deputy Mark Boan, Prescott Valley Police Corporal Jason Kaufman, Central Yavapai Fire District Captain Al Camacho, Bullhead City Police Officer Troy “Heat” Teske, Arizona Department of Economic Security Investigator Frank Mendoza, and El Mirage Police Officer Michael Borrello were all present at the assault during a drunken Christmas carousing along the One Hundred Block of South Montezuma Street in Prescott – which locals call Whiskey Row.

During the wassailing, club members displayed both patches and badges simultaneously. Multiple Iron Brotherhood members were armed and one pulled a knife during the assault on Stafford in a bar named Moctezuma’s.

The documents include a long interview with Prescott Deputy Police Chief Andy “Double Time” Reinhardt. Reinhardt told investigators he was not present for the fight and knows nothing about it. Reinhardt doesn’t seem to know much about anything at all. At one point DPS investigators Matthew Murray and Jeff Brown asked Reinhardt about his patch.

DPS – “Okay, um, is that – are you familiar with the term three-piece-patch?”

Reinhardt – “I am…I…I think what I described is probably a three-piece, I guess, I don’t know.”

Attention John Ciccone

Several documents, including a “Boan Report” and a “Suttle Report” “found several similarities between this club (the Iron Brotherhood) and what are known as outlaw motorcycle clubs, or OMG’s.”

Passages in the reports read like racketeering indictments. For example:

“Both this club and OMG’s have a national organization to which dues are paid and local outlets they both call ‘chapters.’ Both have an hierarchy, and at the chapter level, both identify a ‘president’ ‘vice president,’ ‘secretary,’ ‘treasurer’ or ‘accountant,’ and ‘sergeant at arms.’ Membership in the clubs requires an application and a period of getting to know the person, then approval by the executive board. Membership in both clubs puts stipulations on what type of motorcycle one can ride. The Hells Angels require the motorcycle to be American made and 750 cc or larger, and the Iron Brotherhood requires you ride a Harley Davidson or American made bike.”

“Both wear vests with a three piece patch on the rear that both identify or call ‘rockers.’ It is widely known in both the OMG social circles and law enforcement that motorcycle clubs who wear three piece patch are identified with or known as ‘outlaw motorcycle clubs’ It was common knowledge that the Hells Angels regulate who can wear a three piece patch through the federation of clubs. The Iron Brotherhood patches, or patch system mirrors or emulates that of OMG clubs in that the top rocker identifies the club name, the middle patch is the club’s symbol and the bottom rocker states the region or area where they are from. Most other motorcycle clubs wear only a one or two patch vest. There are some, but few clubs not identified with OMG’s that wear a three piece patch.”

“There was a Letter to the Editor posted in the Prescottnews.com site where the Vice President of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Yavapai County, Michael Trevor Koepke, made a public challenge to the Iron Brotherhood to fight him in a three minute boxing match. Koepke offers that if the Iron Brotherhood wins, the Hells Angels will donate $1000.00 to the charity of choice. If Koepke wins, the Iron Brotherhood would agree to disband in the state of Arizona.”

None of the Iron Brotherhood patch holders have yet been charged or disciplined. DPS investigators wrote “All conclusions relative to this criminal investigation will be formulated by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office upon review of the criminal case.”

The DPS refused to comment on the documents for The Associated Press.

Late this winter, an Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles named Elizabeth Yang convinced a grand jury to indict a turn of phrase. The phrase is “Mongol Nation, an unincorporated association.” Yang is the Chief of the Violent and Organized Crime Section of the Office of the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. The indictment is full of spurious and unproven allegations.

An excellent reporter named Mike Doyle, who covers the Department of Justice from Washington, D.C. for McClatchy Newspapers, ran a syndicated story about the indictment yesterday. Doyle reports the indictment was returned in February. The grand jury was convened in October 2012.

Mongol Nation

The indictment illustrates a quote usually attributed to Albert Einstein, but actually taken from a 1981 pamphlet published by Narcotics Anonymous, which defines insanity as “repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” The Mongol Nation criminal indictment seeks, for the fourth or fifth time, to seize ownership of the insignia of the Mongols Motorcycle Club.

The indictment traces “ownership” of the Mongols’ patch and name from a corporation owned by former Mongols President Ruben “Doc” Cavazos and named Shotgun Productions Limited Liability Corporation, through a short lived corporation named Mongol Nation Motorcycle Club Inc. (which was dissolved on September 19, 2011) to an entirely theoretical defendant named “Mongol Nation, an unincorporated association” which is then called the “Mongols Outlaw Motorcycle Gang” and at other times in the indictment, “The Mongols Gang.” Since there is no legal entity named “Mongol Nation, an unincorporated association,” Yang might as well have indicted Harry Potter. The theoretical Mongol Nation includes every member of the club.

The spurious debate over who owns the Mongols name and patch is no longer even a valid legal issue. The Mongols insignia are not “trade marks” for use in commerce and trade like the name and insignia of the Sinister Mob Syndicate Motorcycle Club on reality television. The Mongols insignia are collective membership marks owned by the Mongols Motorcycle Club which is a legal, ongoing and evolving institution with an evolving membership like the Knights of Columbus, the Veterans or Foreign Wars or the Benevolent and Paternal Order of Elks. The insignia of the club are a form of constitutionally protected speech. The government has been trying to seize the Mongols marks since October 2008 and three federal district judges have already told them to stop.

The Indictment

The indictment is unusually half-assed; worm eaten with errors and larded with lurid details. For example, the indictment refers to the Mongols name and logogram as the “Word Image” and the “Rider Image.” And, the indictment describes “wing parties,” which are a kind of perfectly legal sex orgy.

Another passage in this amazing example of junior high rhetoric states as fact: “Many full patched members also displayed a patch with the designation “1%” to distinguish themselves from the “99%” of motorcycle club members who were legitimate and law-abiding and identify themselves as being within the “1%” who were not legitimate and did not adhere to the law or the rights of others.” Okay, Liz Yang, prove that.

And again: “The Mongols Gang also enforced its authority by directing attacks against members of the general public who defied or unwittingly came into contact with Mongols in a way that was deemed ‘disrespectful’ to the Mongols Gang. Persons in conflict with, or who might be perceived to have shown disrespect to, Mongols were often beaten severely or even killed by being kicked repeatedly with steel-toed boots, stabbed or shot.” So presumably, no Mongol victim was ever kicked by a Mongol wearing tennis shoes.

The actuality behind some of these accusations says far more about the accusers than it does about the accused. Like:

“The Mongols Gang did not allow African-Americans to be members. The Mongols Gang was also hostile to the presence of African-Americans in bars or clubs where Mongols were present or in proximity to female associates of the Mongols Gang.” In fact, the indictment alludes to a specific incident at a night club in Hollywood. What happened was that an African-American male, obviously full of himself, inappropriately fondled the sister of a Mongols patch holder and refused to apologize. A fight ensued during which three undercover ATF Agents, ever aware that they were being audio taped, screamed “nigger” over and over.

Or:

“Mongols Gang leaders, including Ruben Cavazos, Senior, Ruben Cavazos, Junior and Hector Gonzalez, and Mongols Gang full patched members also enforced the authority of the Mongols Gang by directing attacks against rival motorcycle gangs, such as the ‘Hells Angels’ and the ‘Sons of Silence.’” The Sons of Silence reference is particularly dissembling because in that case the beating was imagined, instigated and carried out by a paid ATF mercenary named Dan Horrigan.

Malicious Prosecution

There has not yet been any criminal action taken against the Mongols Motorcycle Club or any of its members as a result of this indictment. Two months after this 44 page artifact was voted out by the grand jury it remains a meaningless curiosity that simply reiterates the long running and still ongoing federal case titled United States of America versus Ruben ‘Doc’ Cavazos et al. The indictment does append three crimes committed by Mongols and not mention in the Cavazos indictment, including the murder of Hells Angel Mark Guardado by Mongol Christopher Ablett in September 2008.

The point of the indictment is obviously to rattle the Mongols and make the club pay to defend itself against whatever wacky thing the feds, with their unlimited budget,  might try next. A member of the Mongols mother chapter, speaking anonymously, said:

“If you go to a grand jury they will indict based on the same dog and pony show they always put in front of them. We tried to keep it (the indictment) quiet because that’s what our attorney advised us to do while he researched the case and made a bullet proof motion to get this thrown out. They haven’t even served the indictment properly and cannot even call it to court. They embarrassed themselves on March 7. This is malicious prosecution! Its a waste of time and money. They are trying to bankrupt the club. We are fighting it all the way.”

Although, the Mongols Motorcycle Club might not have to bother to fight the indictment because the club itself hasn’t been indicted.

Thom Mrozek, the genial spokesman for the Central District of California, had “no comment” on either the indictment or Mike Doyle’s story. Mrozek did confirm that this latest attempt to “get the Mongols” and “rip the patches right off their backs” originated in Los Angeles and was not instigated by the Department of Justice in Washington.

Nevada will probably become the second state to legalize lane splitting. Nevada Assembly Bill 236, sponsored by Representatives Skip Daly, Richard Carrillo and Jame Healey, was approved by the state assembly on April 18th and is now in the Senate Transportation Committee. If the bill is approved by the state senate, it will go into effect on January 1, 2014.

California has always permitted something called “lane sharing,” which allows bikes to “safely” occupy a lane with another motorcycle or car. But the definition of riding safely was always vague. Technically, stopping at a light with your left boot in one lane and your front tire in another was an illegal lane change. Earlier this year, the California Highway Patrol issued a set of guidelines that told bikers how to split lanes legally. Splitting lanes is legal in most countries except the United States.

California’s tolerance for lane sharing dates from the days when virtually every motorcycle was air-cooled – including the ones ridden by the Highway Patrol. Motorcycle patrolman understood that air-cooled engines overheat in freeway traffic jams on hot days. Anyone who has ever been stuck in traffic on the strip in Vegas in the daytime in August understands that the proposed Nevada law is just common sense. It is already legal for cops to split lanes in Nevada. It’s is just not legal for anybody else.

What Will Be Legal

The current version of the Nevada bill would allow motorcycles to split lanes but not mopeds. Bikers would be required to white line “in a manner that is reasonable and proper, having due regard for the traffic, surface and width of the highway, the weather, and other highway conditions.” The law also forbids splitting lanes while moving at more than 30 miles per hour and forbids splitting at more than ten miles an hour above the prevailing speed.

The California guidelines let you split at 40 if the surrounding traffic is only going 30.

Skip Daly, the author of the bill, also thinks lane splitting will reduce the number of bikers who are hit from behind. Daly told The Associated Press, “When you have the ability to do lane splitting, it increases the statistics about the safety of the road.”

The Moron Opposition

The Bill is opposed by people who couldn’t find the start button on a bike if their lives depended on it, the fun house mirror that is Vegas television news – multiple news stories described lane splitting as “bikers zooming in and out of traffic” – and some, but not all, Nevada police.

After the bill passed in the Assembly, a Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper named Loy Hixson was everywhere. He told Las Vagas ABC affiliate KTNV “Drivers are not used to seeing motorcycles. A vehicle may be tempted to make a lane change and that’s where we can see an accident occur.” Then during his standup with CBS affiliate KLAS Hixson declared “The biggest thing is, it’s unsafe. They (meaning us) will take that chance and they will do it because it will help them get to their destination quicker.”

But before the bill passed, Bob Roshak of the Nevada Sheriff’s and Chief’s Association told lawmakers that legalizing lane splitting would “significantly” reduce the number of motorcycles struck from behind. “I think it’s safe if it’s followed in the way the bill is written,” Roshak said. “With the low speeds it makes sense.”

Larry “Larry Mack” McDaniel, who is a regional president of the American Outlaws Association in Georgia, was arraigned again today in the latest attempt by a United States Attorney and an apparently unprofessional FBI Agent named Mark Sewell, to get McDaniel on something. Today it was “Conspiracy and Tampering with a Witness, Victim, or an Informant & Intimidation or Force Against (a) Witness.”

By ironic coincidence, this absolutely essential arraignment was conducted on the very same day that something called the “House Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force of 2013” was holding an organizing meeting. The House Committee aims to stem the growth in the number of criminal statutes and regulations that carry criminal penalties. The goal is to reduce the number of federal inmates which has increased by ten fold in the last 30 years. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, who is an ex-officio member of the Over-Criminalization Task Force, told the Wall Street Journal that Congress “creates 500 new crimes per decade” and that many of them weaken “standards as to whether the crime had to be intended.”

The first thing the Over-Criminalization Task Force should take a look at are the last three federal cases against Larry Mack.

The Back Story

This first iteration of this ongoing case became public in August 2012 when the government announced that the FBI had carried out a successful infiltration of the biker counterculture in Georgia and as a result 23 people were arrested. Twenty-one of the accused were members of the Outlaws, Southern Knights, Black Pistons or Hoodlums Motorcycle Clubs.

In the government’s press release, FBI supervisor Brian D. Lamkin announced that, “Today’s arrests of the numerous members of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club and those of several of its affiliate clubs represents the unified efforts of our region’s law enforcement in addressing a serious and very structured crime problem. The Outlaw Motorcycle Club, its affiliate clubs, and its membership are not above nor beyond the law and today’s arrests, the culmination of a two-year intensive investigation, should serve as clear evidence of that.”

In the same release Sally Quillian Yates, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia gloated, “All but two of the defendants charged in this investigation have direct ties to the Outlaw Motorcycle Club or other motorcycle clubs that are affiliated with and controlled by the Outlaws. The charges unsealed today allege that these motorcycle club members engaged in substantial drug trafficking and weapons offenses. This case is a big step forward in making sure that these groups don’t threaten the safety of our North Georgia communities.”

McDaniel, King and Brown

McDaniel and two other men, Sean King, an Outlaw from Gordon, Georgia and Howard Brown who is the Georgia President of the Black Pistons Motorcycle Club, were charged with obstructing a criminal investigation.

What had happened, according the government, was that McDaniel had found out that the FBI was conducting an undercover investigation and “had placed either an Undercover Employee or a Confidential Informant inside the Black Pistons Motorcycle Club’s Cleveland, Georgia chapter.” So McDaniel apparently suggested that that chapter be shut down – which it was. It is unclear what else McDaniel should have done.

There was then an investigation to determine how McDaniel knew what he knew and a second indictment of McDaniel, King and Brown for impeding “the due and proper administration of the law under which a proceeding was pending before the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency of the United States.” That charge actually turned out not to be a crime because, to slightly over simplify, FBI investigations are not “proceedings.”

Indictment Number Three

The government, however, stubbornly refuses to believe that. In an indictment filed in chambers on April 24th, the government alleges:

“Beginning in or about June 2012, and continuing until on or about August 16, 2012, in the Northern District of Georgia, the defendants, LARRY MCDANIEL, a/k/a ‘Larry Mack,’ HOWARD BROWN, and SEAN KING, did knowingly and intentionally combine, conspire, confederate, agree, and have a tacit understanding with each other, to commit offenses against the United States, that is, (1) to violate Title 18, United states Code, Section 1512(c){2), in that the defendants would corruptedly obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding, to wit: an investigation being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in which D.B.S. was acting as an undercover informant for the FBI and Michael Griffin, a/k/a ‘Griff’ a law enforcement officer was acting in an undercover capacity, and (2) to violate Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512{c) (2), in that the defendants would corruptedly obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding, to wit: a federal grand jury investigation into criminal offenses investigated by the FBI, said FBI investigation involving D.B.S. acting as an undercover informant and Michael Griffin, a/k/a ‘Griff,’ a law enforcement officer, acting in an undercover capacity.”

William L. McKinnon, Jr. and Sally B. Molloy, the two prosecutors in the case, like that charge so much they say the same thing three times, so this indictment has three counts.

The Way Back Story

Of course, this case is unfolding in the south where, William Faulkner observed, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

FBI Case Agent Sewell has an interesting past. In May 2001, during a racketeering trial of seven men connected to an Atlanta stripper bar called The Gold Club, Sewell blew up multiple times in court after he was romantically linked to a club employee and alleged prostitute named Jennifer Moranello. At one point Sewell threw a videotape at one of the lawyers in that case.

Donald F. Samuel was among the attorneys in that courtroom that day. Samuel now represents Larry McDaniel.

McKinnon and Molloy don’t want this case to go to trial. They simply want to use the federal judiciary as a weapon to punish McDaniel, King and Brown for frustrating the volatile Sewell.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is one of the world’s leading proponents of “zero tolerance,” which forbids police to use discretion when citing citizens for any of thousands of possible infractions. It is a law enforcement philosophy that blatantly encourages cops to search for excuses to bully citizens and it only works one way. Citizens must scrupulously obey authority but cops can do anything they want.

It is also an offensive perversion of official power and it isn’t just people who read pages like this who think so. Which explains why the video below has gotten about three million hits on YouTube since it was posted to a thread on the social media site Reddit three days ago.

The clip, which was actually posted to YouTube last September, documents an encounter between a 12-year-old named Jeremy Drew and a Vegas Metro motorcycle officer who refuses to identify himself. The kid documented the encounter on a smartphone and it has already sparked an informal debate between pro-cop apologists who accuse the kid of being rude and the generally unacknowledged majority of Americans who are fed up with police.

The Encounter

In the normal course of being twelve, the kid observed the cop’s motorcycle parked on the sidewalk in front Terrible Herbst’s convenience store. Terrible’s is a common chain of convenience stores in Vegas. Do to the kid’s experience and training, he was aware that most people aren’t allowed to park on a sidewalk in Vegas.

When the cop exits the store with a giant drink in his hand – the kind that may soon be illegal in New York City – the boy asks, “Um…hello? Is there a reason for you to park on the sidewalk? Is it an emergency or anything?”

“Because I can,” the surly cop growls.

“Can I see your badge number?”

“Why?”

“Uh, because I have the right to.”

“You do, huh? What are you? A junior lawyer?”

“No. I just want to see your badge number.” The cop ignores the kid until the kid asks again, “Can I please see your badge number.”

“No.”

“Really?”

Moving to the offensive, the cop asks ”Do you have ID on you?”

“No. I’m a minor.”

“Well, if you don’t have ID how do I know who you are.” It’s how cops think. How can the kid prove he isn’t Al Qaeda if he doesn’t carry his official papers. It is an official affect that worked for the Nazis.

“I’m Jeremy Drew.”

“What?”

“I’m Jeremy.”

“Well how do I know that?” After a brief exchange about whether police have to obey the same laws as civilians the cop accuses the kid of “loitering.”

“No. I’m actually mailing this.”

And then the heroic policemen rode off.

The video began appearing on various television stations throughout the country this morning. It has not yet been broadcast in Las Vegas.

The Rock Hell racketeering case filed eleven months ago against members of the Hells Angels, Red Devils and Southern Gentlemen Motorcycle Clubs in South Carolina zombies on.

In the last week a couple of notable defendants have been sentenced. Two more are scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow and two more are scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

Byrum And Chitwood

Two members of the Southern Gentlemen were sentenced last week.

Kerry “Gowilla” Chitwood was sentenced on May 2nd to 20 years in prison followed by ten years of supervised release. He must also participate in a substance abuse program and forfeit his motorcycle. Chitwood, apparently on the advice of his attorney, pled guilty to narcotics conspiracy on February 11 as the trial of the remaining defendants in the case was about to begin.

Ronald Dean “Big Ron” Byrum, who pled guilty to narcotics conspiracy on January 17th, was sentenced May 3rd to 51 months in prison. In addition, Byrum must endure a subsequent 96 months of supervised probation. While on probation, Byrum must cheerfully “participate in a substance abuse treatment program, to include drug testing” and “participate in a mental health treatment program as approved by the U.S. Probation Office.” “Substance abuse treatment” and “mental health treatment” are what the North Koreans more frankly call “re-education.” Unless he comes out of prison with a job waiting for him, Byrum must also “participate in a Vocational Training or Work Force Development Program as approved by the U.S. Probation Office.” Byrum also forfeits his motorcycle. Byrum was tape recorded bragging to fellow defendant and club brother Kerry Chitwood that he had seen “multiple kilos” of cocaine.

Rhodus And Looper

Two of the alleged conspirators will be sentenced tomorrow.

James “Sonny” Rhodus pled guilty to money laundering on January 17th. Rhodus deposited money in his bank account and returned it to a despicable federal informant named Joseph “Midas” Dillulio. Dillulio told Rhodus it was dirty money. Rhodus did Dillulio the favor anyway. Rhodus will probably be sentenced to probation.

Johanna Looper will also be sentenced tomorrow. She pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy on January 17th. Looper was the girlfriend of a Hells Angel Prospect named Donald Boersma. What she actually did was deliver 50 legally obtained Percocet pills at the request of the pills legal possessor, Frank Enriquez, to Dillulio with the knowledge that Enriquez was selling them to Dillulio for $300. Dillulio then asked Looper if she needed any money. Looper, who was in dire financial straights, said “yes.” Dillulio, who cultivated the reputation of a big spender, then tipped Looper $40 at which point, the government argued, she became a racketeer. Looper also almost delivered more pills to Dillulio two weeks later before Dan Bifield told her not to associate with the man. Looper faces a potential sentence of 20 years in prison.

The Bifield’s

Dan and Lisa Bifield, the husband and wife the government has repeatedly accused of being at the heart of the alleged underworld conspiracy, were scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow. They will now be sentenced together on May 29th. They both made plea deals last December 27th. Dan Bifield agreed to plead guilty and be sentenced to 20 years if his wife did not have to testify and was sentenced to no more than five years in prison.

When he learned that his wife would be required to testify Dan Bifield sought to withdraw his plea deal and, subsequently, Lisa Bifield refused to testify for the government. Lisa Bifield now faces seven years to life in prison. Judge Cameron McGowan Currie denied Bifield’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea in April.

Bruce Long

The argument between attorney Joshua Kendrick who represents former Hells Angels Rock Hell Nomads’ charter president Bruce Long and prosecutor Julius N. Richardson remains unresolved. Long (photo above) was found guilty of numerous counts including narcotics conspiracy and racketeering conspiracy on March 14th and Kendrick moved for a directed verdict of acquittal on April 3rd. Kendrick believes that Long’s alleged crimes would never have occurred without the instigation of Dillulio.

Richardson has argued back that “a RICO conspiracy does not require that even a single racketeering act occur, much less a pattern. The gravamen (a lawyer word which means grievance or crime) of the conspiracy is the agreement, which does not require that any specific act actually occur. As RICO conspiracy does not require an act to have occurred, it also does not require that such acts be related or pose a threat of continuity. While the agreement must contemplate an enterprise that commits a pattern of racketeering acts, neither the enterprise nor a pattern of racketeering acts need actually occur.”

Richardson also argues that Long must be guilty because he is a Hells Angel. He claims “the acts were related based on the kickbacks the Hells Angels and their leadership obtained as a result of the members’ racketeering activity…the standard operating procedure for the Hells Angels, by which the group existed to facilitate the illicit ‘business’ of its members.”

Kendrick has until Friday to formally reply to the prosecutor.

A news story published yesterday in the Columbia, South Carolina State raises ethical questions about the incestuous relationship between journalists and official sources. You can read that story, written by Andrew Dys here.

Essentially, journalism has two components, one artistic and the other mundane. The mundane component involves collecting and brokering information obtained from public documents and human sources. Ideally, a reporter will find a story to tell in the information he has collected and then tell it cogently. Dys is a cogent writer but his statements are often so wrong than the State does a disservice to the people of South Carolina by publishing them.

The State’s Story

Dys and the State newspaper have lied to their readers and the lies are so careless and misleading that at least some of them must be answered.

In his lead, or as journalists usually write it “lede,” Dys states that five “bikers connected to the Rock Hill Hells Angels” will be sentenced today. In fact, two people were to be sentenced today and one of them was a woman accused of delivering 50 legally obtained Percocet pills to a paid FBI informant and agent provocateur named Joseph Dillulio. The transaction was illegal and the woman, named Johanna Looper, would never have profited from it except by subterfuge. Dillulio engaged Looper in conversation after she made the delivery. He asked how she was. Looper who was indigent and desperate replied honestly and Dillulio presented her with a gift of $40. On that basis, Looper was charged with narcotics conspiracy, a crime which carries a penalty of 20 years in prison. In January, Looper threw herself at the mercy of the court and pled guilty. Federal justice is so blatantly unfair that about 92 percent of all federal prisoners plead guilty to something whether they are factually innocent or not.

Looper pled guilty because the United States no longer has an adversarial system of justice but rather an administrative system of justice in which the key question is not about guilt or innocence but about how to speed accused persons to prison in the most efficient manner. Cooperative defendants always fare better in the federal courts that uncooperative defendants who insist on their innocence. In the words of David O. Carter, a former Marine and a U.S. District judge in Orange County, California, “If the people knew what goes on here (in federal court) they would burn the courthouse down.”

The State couldn’t find news in that.

Dys then wrote, “The Hells Angels were a gang, federal prosecutors proved at trial earlier this year in U.S. District Court in Columbia. A gang that was no different than black or Hispanic street gangs, the Mafia gangs of Italian whites, that police and courts in America repeatedly prove maim and kill and sell drugs and intimidate those who try to stop them, prosecutors argued.”

In fact, no such thing was proven even after five of the defendants insisted on a trial.

Plyler

After a month-long trial, one of the defendants, named Thomas Plyler, was found not guilty. Plyler beat the odds. About 90 percent of all federal defendants who insist on a trial are convicted anyway. The conviction rate in federal court exceeds 99 percent for three reasons. First, prosecutors play pernicious games in federal court including the hiding of evidence of actual innocence and strategies that include “evidence dumps.” A legal scholar named Bennett L. Gershman writing in the Case Western Reserve Law Review probably coined the term “Games Prosecutors Play” to describe the entrapments, “sentence entrapments” and discovery strategies that prosecutors usually describe as “stings.” One federal prosecutor in Los Angeles in another motorcycle club case memorialized the term “guerilla street theater” as an alternative to sting. An attorney named Andrew Carlon writing in the Virginia Law Review described what goes on in federal courts as a manifestation of “The Sadistic State.”

It is, Carlon wrote, “a system where…incentives and motives have short circuited: The emergence, irreducible to its individual components, of a state run amok. It is a state that has decided that, since its unique function is the power to punish, it must pursue punishment as an intrinsic good, independent of desert (or, indeed, of the other, more consequentialist aims of punishment), transforming itself into a ‘punishment machine.’ But as we have seen, punishment without desert reduces to sadism. We get the ‘sadistic state,’ which wields power, most fully realized through the infliction of pain, as an end in itself, the human beings in its power merely means to that awful end.”

One of the most sadistic facets of this case, which was originally titled U.S. versus Daniel Bifield et al., was a strategy of blackmailing defendants into plea deals by criminally charging their significant others. Two wives (Somying Anderson and Lisa Bifield) and one girlfriend (Looper) were charged with participating in what Dys thinks was a Hells Angel conspiracy. Charges were dropped against Anderson just before the beginning of trial because the case against her was always nonexistent. After the prosecution rested in the trial, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed all charges against Looper’s boyfriend, Donald Boersma. But the strategy did work on the lead defendant, Daniel Bifield, who pled guilty last December 27th in order to spare the woman who is clearly the love of his life. “I fell on my sword and did the right thing” the romantic Bifield said. It did not work. Mrs. Bifield still faces at least seven years and up to life in prison. Dan Bifield thought he had been double-crossed and attempted to renounce his plea agreement. He failed because it is a particularly decadent agreement. In that document Bifield waived “the right to contest either the conviction or the sentence in any direct appeal or other post-conviction action.” It was, in short, a pact with the devil signed in blood. Bifield also “agreed” to frustrate the sort of work Dys should be doing. He waived “all rights, whether asserted directly or by a representative, to request or receive from any department or agency of the United States any records pertaining to the investigation or prosecution of this case, including without limitation any records that may be sought under the Freedom of Information Act….”

RICO

Dys also misrepresents the federal statue that allows defendants accused of state crimes to be charged with federal crimes that carry penalties that are ten to twenty times more severe than those in state court – RICO.

The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations law was the centerpiece of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. It was written by a Senatorial aide named G. Robert Blakey, who is now the William and Dorothy O’Neill Professor of Law at Notre Dame. And, it is named for the fictional character Rico “Little Caesar” Bandello who was inhabited on film by Edward G. Robinson. Robinson’s Rico character, in turn, was a parody of Alphonse Gabriel “Scarface” Capone. Shortly before he went to jail for tax evasion, Capone tried to get out of rum running and into the milk business. RICO was intended to prevent future gangsters from using criminal funds to infiltrate legitimate “enterprises.”

The original intent of RICO was lost when the Supreme Court redefined the meaning of the term “criminal enterprise” in a case titled United States versus Turkette. After Turkette, enterprise no longer meant a bar, bowling alley or dairy that had been corrupted by a “mob.” Turkette changed the meaning of ‘criminal enterprise” to any group of three or more people who among them committed two or more crimes in the previous decade. The Columbia Law Review excoriated the decision for creating “the crime of being a criminal.” Practically, the redefined RICO allowed federal prosecutors to federalize any crime.

Dys tells the State’s readers that RICO is “used to prosecute the worst criminals. Sentences for RICO require the razing of forests of trees to print all the pages of numbers of years in a prison” and he quotes a former prosecutor named Miller Shealy who says, “RICO is what people remember is used in Mafia trials. RICO is the huge hammer for the prosecution. RICO is about the worst punishment there is.” Dys’ recounting of whatever  Shealy actually said is both dissembling and perjorative.

Dys goes on to claim that “prosecutors proved the case against 15 of 20 Hells Angels members and associates” which is also inaccurate. What prosecutor Julius Richardson did was convince a majority of the defendants to sign plea and sentencing agreements which is entirely different than proving guilt. Coerced confessions in plea deals are considered heresay.

Journalism And Propaganda

Dys work on this case represents the seedy underside of reporting in the autumn of print journalism. Federal cases like Bifield are increasingly secretive. Prosecutors hide great chunks of cases in order to gain a competitive advantage over defendants and to frustrate the press from telling citizens “what goes on here” lest citizens “burn the courthouse down.” Consequently reporters often depend on police and court house sources to tell them what the story is. There is no getting around that for most of what is still left of the working press. Unscrupulous prosecutors can simply refuse to talk to reporters who don’t cooperate. So gutless reporters, as opposed to Woodward and Bernstein, cooperate and keep their jobs. The State should not be condemned because it is gutless. Nobody expects the State to be the Washington Post.

However, even gutless reporters can remain cynical and skeptical in their hearts. Even today, there is a bright and clear line between collaborating with injustice and cheerleading for it. That is the line Dys and the State have crossed.

Twice in the last month Dys has vilified defendants in this case. On April 15th Dys wrote: “The Hells Angels must have forgotten the page in the codebook that says the United States government does not allow selling methamphetamine, cocaine and assault rifles to be used in crimes, money laundering and ongoing criminal enterprise kept alive by intimidation and fear.” Dys seems to assume that “the Hells Angels” Motorcycle Club was on trial because, he also seems to assume, members of that club are all soulless thugs rather than fellow passengers on the sinking American boat. The prosecution tried to promote that fiction but that was not what the Bifield case was about. The case was about spending millions of dollars to entice innocent people to break the law on hidden camera – like Candid Camera in hell.

About the lead defendant, Dys wrote: “He did not say whether he approved of himself, his associates and other outlaw bikers selling narcotics and guns that end up in the hands of school kids who get shot or turn into junkies or go to prison later as dope dealers.” It is completely untrue that the Hells Angels as a group or the defendants in this case are responsible for the death or corruption of school children and it is irresponsible to say so.

Dys also says: “It was proved in court: Rock Hill Hells Angels and associates sold drugs and guns and laundered money as part of a crime ring that reached as far as New England, with leadership of the group getting kickbacks from all the criminal activity.” None of that was proven at trial. The “crime ring” to which Dys refers was a fairy tale.

In yesterday’s story Dys claims “the final outcome” of the case was what “the public demanded and prosecutors delivered.”

The final outcome of this corrupt and completely invented case was that people still don’t know what goes on in federal court. Dys is not a journalist. He is a propagandist. The State should apologize to its readers and reconsider its coverage of the case.