Placed in a cell with an Aryan Brotherhood killer, he lasted 32 minutes, lawsuit says
Rodney J. DeLong Jr. had seven months to go on his nine-year stretch at High Desert State Prison in Susanville when someone decided to move him to a new cell on May 6, 2018.
DeLong, 28, was a 6-foot, 140-pound inmate serving nine years from Placer County on a 2014 conviction for burglary, possession of a controlled substance and assault with a deadly weapon.
As part of the prison’s “cell-compaction process,” DeLong was moved at 12:30 p.m. that day to cell Z-161, where he was to share a cell with Robert John Stockton.
Stockton, now 42, was serving a life term for a murder in Tehama County and was accused of killing another inmate, Doug Maynard, in October 2016, in a bid to win membership in the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
DeLong lasted 32 minutes in his new cell before he was stabbed to death in his head, neck and eyes.
“By the time correctional staff reached cell Z-161, they found Stockton blocking the door of the cell,” a lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento says. “When Stockton moved, officers could see DeLong lying in a pool of blood from his torso to his head.
“Stockton dropped a prison-manufactured weapon out of the food port in the cell door.”
DeLong, who was pronounced dead at 1:02 p.m., never should have been placed inside the Lassen County cell with Stockton, according to the lawsuit filed by his mother, Anjanette DeLong, who alleges negligence and wrongful death.
Even before the cell transfer, “DeLong was considered an enemy of the AB that would be targeted for attack,” the suit says, adding that correctional staffers realized that after placing him with Stockton but did not get him out of the cell in time to save him from the attack.
Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in an email Tuesday that the department would not comment on pending litigation.
But the DeLong slaying is one of a series of killings allegedly orchestrated from inside prison walls by Aryan Brotherhood members who are now the focus of a sprawling federal prosecution taking place in Sacramento that is expected to drag on for years.
Conspiracy charges against Aryan Brotherhood
Criminal charges — including some that may lead to the federal death penalty — were filed last May against 16 Aryan Brotherhood members and their associates. U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said at the time the case was a strike at a conspiracy that included five murders of inmates by gang members and an extensive network of drug trafficking controlled through the use of contraband cell phones smuggled into prisons.
DeLong was killed just before prosecutors announced their case, and Stockton is not listed as a defendant in the racketeering case prosecutors filed.
But the Maynard slaying 18 months earlier is spelled out in detail in the criminal complaint, and says Stockton killed Maynard on orders from fellow inmate Jason “Jake” Corbett, who was serving time for a 1998 murder conviction.
Corbett ordered the hit to increase his position within the prison gang, court filings say, and he and another inmate killed another prisoner in July 2018 at High Desert by stabbing him repeatedly.
The Aryan Brotherhood gang formed in 1964 maintains a policy of “blood in, blood out,” meaning that “potential members must commit a murder to gain full membership, and can only leave when they die,” court filings say.
The group notes that prison stabbings “should be executed in a bloody and cruel manner so that it leaves a lasting impression on other inmates,” the documents say, and one expert says the ongoing prosecution means prison officials need to be especially vigilant about the safety of inmates suspected of running afoul of the gang.
“Aryan Brotherhood is notorious for using violence to keep discipline in its ranks, and probably at the top of that list would be informants,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “These prison gangs are violent enough, but one of the ways that discipline is maintained through the ranks is a strict and quick doling out of violence where there is either dissension or informants.”
Phone booth for defendant?
The racketeering case already has sparked a number of legal fights over how the suspects are being treated in custody.
Many of the defendants are either being held in the Sacramento County Jail or area prisons as prosecutors and defense attorneys battle over the conditions of their confinement and whether some of them are too dangerous to be brought to court.
Federal prosecutors filed a motion last year to have 10 of the defendants appear in court hearings through video hookups, arguing that they “pose extraordinary security risks” and that the ones held in the jail have been studying security procedures and asking about the jail’s locks.
That motion is pending, and defense attorneys are opposing it. They say the inmates are being held in virtual isolation and that conditions, especially in the jail directly across the street from the federal courthouse, make it virtually impossible for them to plot defense strategies with their clients.
The defense is asking for greater access to telephones and rooms to use with their clients, and authorities at California State Prison, Sacramento, in Folsom where defendant Brant Daniel is currently housed, are now considering installing a special phone booth for Daniel to use to make confidential calls to his attorneys, court papers filed Friday say.
“At this point, CSP-Sacramento is still attempting to determine the cost and time it would take to install this phone booth before it can commit to doing so,” the documents say.
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 12:51 PM with the headline "Placed in a cell with an Aryan Brotherhood killer, he lasted 32 minutes, lawsuit says ."