SACRAMENTO — A federal magistrate judge Monday denied an alleged Aryan Brotherhood members attempts to be outfitted with special tennis shoes to accommodate his severe foot pain, but the issue hasnt been fully resolved.
Jason “Jake” Corbett, 47, has been trying to get Sacramento County jail staff to turn over his tennis shoes ever since July, when he and 15 other alleged Aryan Brotherhood members and associates were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Corbett had been serving a life sentence in state prison for murder, but when he was turned over to federal custody, jail staff confiscated the shoes.
The shoes are important, Corbetts attorneys argued, because he is in constant pain without them. Corbett suffers from gout and complications from multiple motorcycle-related injuries, his attorneys said in motions and in open court.
“For example in one accident he suffered a severe concussion as well as broke his feet so grievously that…his bones were cut off in order to remove his boots,” Corbetts attorney Kresta Daly wrote in a motion. “As a result of this and other accidents, Mr. Corbett has numerous plates and screws in his feet.”
In a somewhat snarky motion, federal prosecutors offered this response to Daly: that Corbetts feet seemed to be working just fine in July 2018, when he and another alleged Aryan Brotherhood member used shanks to murder a fellow inmate at High Desert State Prison on behalf of their gang.
Corbetts alleged victim, Donald Pequeen, was stabbed more than 10 times on the prison yard. Authorities say he was talking to another Aryan Brotherhood member, Pat Brady, and while Pequeen was distracted, Corbett attacked him from behind. Brady then allegedly joined in the attack, ignoring guards commands to cease.
One of the shanks used in the killing had a Nazi symbol the “SS,” carved into it. Prosecutors say this was, “meant to send a message to other inmates that Pequeens murder was a hit carried out by the Aryan Brotherhood.”
Magistrate Judge Allison Claire denied Corbetts motion at a Monday hearing in Sacramento, but she asked the U.S. Marshal Service to talk to the jail about the issue, according to the Sacramento Bee. A Sacramento sheriff spokeswoman told the Bee that medical staff determined the tennis shoes werent necessary.
Daly responded in court filings that the jail has a history of ignoring inmates serious medical needs.
“First, (the U.S. Attorneys office) assumes the jail has determined Mr. Corbetts shoes somehow pose a safety issue…The more likely explanation for the jails failure to provide Mr. Corbett with his shoes is the Sacramento County Sheriffs chronic disregard of and deliberate indifference to the medical needs of the people living within the jail,” Daly wrote. “Precisely how a pair of shoes poses a safety risk remains unclear.”
The case
Corbett is facing charges of murdering Pequeen in High Desert, and conspiring to kill an Aryan Brotherhood associate at the same facility two years earlier.
The charging records allege that in August 2016, Corbett and a leader in the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, Ronald Dean Yandell, 57, used contraband prison cell phones to communicate. Yandell, a former Richmond resident, was in New Folsom State Prison, serving a life sentence in connection with a double homicide in El Sobrante.
In conversations on Aug. 21, 2016, Yandell and Corbett allegedly plotted to murder Aryan Brotherhood associate Paul “Dreamer” Diaz. Corbett allegedly told Yandell hed tried to reason with Diaz about an unspecified issue, but that Diaz had a “death wish” and Corbett was willing to “smoke his a–” if they ended up on a yard together. Corbett said he could send another inmate named Bobby Stockton to do the deed, prosecutors allege.
In another conversation, Yandell said hed Read More – Source
