SACRAMENTO — An incarcerated man from West Contra Costa already convicted to two lifetime prison sentences is facing a third life term, this time on attempted murder charges after he allegedly pulled a knife on state prison guards, according to court records and a lawyer familiar with the case.
Aryan Brotherhood prison gang leader Ronald Dean Yandell stood no chance of ever leaving prison, but Sacramento County officials now appear ready to put the question of how many life terms one man can serve to the test.
Prosecutors there have charged Yandell, a leader of the White supremacist prison gang, with attempted murder, stemming from when he allegedly pulled a knife on two state correctionial officers at a prison last year, according to records and the lawyer.
Yandell faces life if convicted, but there isn’t much more the legal system can do to him. In 2004, he was sentenced to life in state prison for killing two men in a Mother’s Day 2001 shooting in El Sobrante. Last December, he was sentenced to life in federal prison and defiantly at the hearing told the judge, “I’m still standing.”
In 1987, he and two other men were charged with stabbing another inmate more than 15 times during a fight at a Tracy prison. Yandell beat that case by arguing self-defense, according to court records. The two subsequent life cases went against him.
Last year, prosecutors convinced a jury that Yandell was a high-ranking Aryan Brotherhood member who’d ordered prison murders and helped lead a prison-smuggling ring across California. While awaiting a formal sentencing, a corrections officer California State Prison, Sacramento guard allegedly injured a handcuffed Yandell. His lawyer says the officer knocked Yandell down and his lost several teeth and injured his spine.
Then, in November, Yandell allegedly pulled a prison shank on two guards during a medical transport at the same prison. He has since been transferred to Folsom State Prison and placed into administrative segregation, records show.
Despite all the federal charges against him, one place Yandell has not served time is a federal prison facility.
Since last year, Yandell and five other Aryan Brotherhood members have either been convicted or pleaded guilty to racketeering murder charges that carry a federal life sentence. All but one has received such a sentence, and the sixth man likely will in coming weeks.
But none of them have yet been transferred to federal prison, not even Brant “Two Scoops” Daniel, a Sacramento native who says he actually wants to leave the “corruption” of the state prison system behind, and go to “the feds.”
Daniel, Yandell, and the other four are all already serving life in state prison. When they were indicted in 2019, prosecutors said they initiated the case to get them into the federal Bureau of Prisons, thereby removing them from a state prison system where they reportedly exude influence over other White inmates, and can access contraband cellphones with ease — a potentially dangerous combination.
Instead, Yandell will likely see the inside of a Sacramento superior courthouse before he ends up in a federal cell, if he ever does. His arraignment has been set for April 25. Before then, Daniel will have a court hearing where federal prosecutors will provide an update on the thus-far unsuccessful attempts to get Daniel and others transferred to the BOP.