SACRAMENTO — After killing two men in as many years at High Desert State Prison, 46-year-old Robert Stockton decided that his government name had run its course.
So in 2018, Stockton changed the pre-recorded greeting for outgoing prisoner calls to family and friends. From then on, his loved ones were told they were receiving a call from “Bobby the Butcher.”
“My grandma hates it,” Stockton recalled from a witness stand Monday.
Stockton, a Richmond native, was one of several incarcerated men to take the stand during a lengthy trial of three Aryan Brotherhood members accused of racketeering. But he stands out in two major ways: unlike the others, he is not a government informant and he took the long bus ride from Pelican Bay State Prison to Sacramento to testify for the defense.
As such, Stockton received different treatment than the prisoners called by the government, who showed up to court without chains, often donning civilian clothes. Stockton was covered in chains, could barely raise his right hand to take the oath and he wore a bright orange uniform with “CDCR Prisoner” emblazoned across it in big black lettering.
During his roughly 90 minutes of testimony, Stockton touched on many topics, including a controversial homicide that resulted in allegations of prison guard corruption — or ineptitude, depending on who you believe — and a $405,000 lawsuit settlement to the family of 28-year-old Rodney DeLong, the man killed. Stockton, DeLong’s killer, agreed with DeLong’s family that the two never should have been placed in the same High Desert cell.
“I consider myself lucky. Guys are crazy in prison,” Stockton said, after claiming he killed DeLong in self-defense. He later added, “The cops set us up…They shouldn’t have put him in my cell.”
DeLong was killed within 30 minutes of being placed in the cell. Stockton claims DeLong pulled a knife on him first. DeLong’s family, in their lawsuit, argued that prison officials either failed to recognize that DeLong was listed as an “enemy” of the Aryan Brotherhood, or didn’t care they were putting DeLong in harm’s way.
Stockton’s purpose was to testify about the 2016 prison killing of 53-year-old Douglas Maynard, a homicide that prosecutors contend was done at the behest of higher-ups in the Aryan Brotherhood. But Stockton claimed that, much like DeLong, he killed Maynard in self-defense after Maynard came after him with a knife, in an apparent racist rage over Stockton working with a Black man for a prison self-help course.
Stockton says he can’t remember the actual stabbing and emerged from a brief blackout on the afternoon of Oct. 15, 2016, holding Maynard’s knife in his hand and standing over a pool of Maynard’s blood. Maynard had been stabbed 34 times.
“I was stabbing him repeatedly. I don’t know how I got the weapon,” Stockton said, occasionally appearing overcome with emotion as he discussed the killing.
Stockton suffered a broken finger and a cut to his hand, he said, from throwing his hand up in self-defense as Maynard swung at him with the knife. He was shown pictures of that injury and asked if a ring on his finger was the same seen in the photograph of his bloody hand.
“Yeah. That’s my lucky ring,” he said. Stockton was never prosecuted for the killing after fellow inmates corroborated his self-defense claim.
During cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hitt repeatedly called Stockton a liar who committed both killings as an “audition” for the Aryan Brotherhood. Earlier in the trial, jurors were treated to audio recordings from a wiretapped call where one of the RICO defendants, Ronald Dean Yandell, tells another person that Maynard was killed for “talking s—” and other mishaps unrelated to Stockton’s claims.
“You’re here to help Ronnie Yandell, correct?” Hitt asked.
“No, I’m here to tell the truth,” Stockton replied.
Hitt responded that he’d been keeping a tally of how many times Stockton gave “rehearsed” answers about telling the truth. At times, he accused Stockton of deliberately dodging questions about gangs in prison, and on two occasions sarcastically asked Stockton if his hearing had been damaged in either incident.
Stockton admitted that he’d been placed in Pelican Bay after a guard warned him the Aryan Brotherhood had marked him for death, but said he saw the warning as a dishonest ploy concocted by authorities. He claimed that after killing Maynard, he simply bent the knife with his bare hands to disable it and threw it away, while Hitt — clearly doubtful of this version — asked him if he had actually bent it by stabbing through Maynard’s body and hitting the hard ground underneath.
After the DeLong homicide, Stockton said he hung two images of coffins on the wall of his cell, but claimed those were Halloween decorations and a Metallica reference. With regards to the actual killing of DeLong, Hitt asked Stockton why he didn’t call for help if it was true that DeLong pulled a knife on him.
“Who am I supposed to call for help?” Stockton responded. “The guards put him in there.”
The RICO trial against Yandell, Danny Troxell and William Sylvester, now entering its third month, continues Wednesday.