Phone calls for Aryan Brotherhood member weren’t private at California prison, lawyers say

Lawyers for Aryan Brotherhood defendant Brant Daniel have been trying for a year now to get their client moved out of California State Prison, Sacramento, alleging his life is in danger, that guards at the troubled prison have threatened to kill him and that his supposedly confidential legal conversations and mail are being monitored.

Now, his attorneys say they have proof that his phone calls with lawyers at New Folsom prison are being monitored: written documents from two correctional officers confirming they can hear his conversations.

“Could you officers hear my legal call w/ my attorneys?” Daniel wrote in a note last Tuesday to a correctional officer identified only as “Singh” in court filings.

“Yes! Every Tues!” the officer replied in writing, according to a filing in federal court in Sacramento made late last week.

“Hey, you overheard my convo to my attys thru the partition yesterday?” Daniel wrote in a Dec. 8 note to an officer identified as “Sanchez.” “Can you hear my legal calls that easily?”

“Yes! You are heard!” the officer answered the next day, according to court files.

Citing the documents, Daniel attorneys John Balazs and Timothy Warriner are renewing their effort to get Daniel moved to a new facility pending trial on racketeering charges, writing to U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller that “the Court should order that Mr. Daniel be transferred out of CDCR custody to an appropriate pretrial detention facility to protect his right of access to counsel and the exercise of his constitutional rights.”

Daniel’s lawyers say federal prosecutors have committed “repeated violations of the Court’s orders requiring that defendants’ communications with their attorneys be confidential.”

The claims are part of repeated allegations that Daniel and his co-defendants housed at the Sacramento County Main Jail are not receiving proper and confidential access to their attorneys, and resulted in an order by the judge in July 2020 requiring that the defendants be able to talk to their attorneys in person and on the phone without being overheard.

Sacramento County sheriff’s officials conceded in court papers filed last summer that they had inadvertently video recorded 14 attorney-client visits between April 29 and May 19, 2020, taking video of visits between attorneys, paralegals and Aryan Brotherhood defendants, as well as others. The Sheriff’s Office added that no audio was captured on the videos and that attorneys’ legal documents could not be read on the videos.

The next hearing in the case is set for Wednesday, and lawyers for the defendants are seeking access to laptops or tablets for their clients to review evidence. Daniel’s lawyers also are seeking an order compelling California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials to turn over documents related to his claims that officers planted a shank in his cell and concocted a story that he planned to kill a guard.

Prosecutors have dismissed Daniel’s complaints, referring to him in court filings as an Aryan Brotherhood prison gang member “with an egregious 24-year history of prison violence, including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, manslaughter, battery with a deadly weapon (twice), and battery on an inmate with serious injury.”

The legal wrangling is playing out against a backdrop of an ongoing FBI probe into activities at New Folsom, accusations that guards have planned inmate murders and lawsuits.

The prison also employed two whistleblowers who alleged widespread misconduct and harassment and who both died in the last year, one from an accidental fentanyl overdose, the other from suicide.