A lawyer went to court one morning, unaware that an alleged Aryan Brotherhood assassin was out looking for him
SACRAMENTO — Members of the Aryan Brotherhood plotted to assassinate a prominent criminal defense lawyer and onetime district attorney candidate while he represented a member of the prison gang’s upper echelon, an alleged conspiracy that remained hidden from public view until a Wednesday afternoon court hearing.
The attorney, Todd Leras, said in court Wednesday that law enforcement has warned him several times of risks to his life brought about by an alleged murder plot hatched behind bars, including an allegation that a hitman working for the Aryan Brotherhood was assigned to travel to Sacramento on the same day Leras was presenting closing arguments for his client in a racketeering case.
At the Wednesday hearing, a discussion of the alleged plot culminated in a heated back-and-forth between Leras and Senior U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller, who also alluded to the gang having made an attempt on a federal prosecutor as well.
“The risks to both Mr. (Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason) Hitt and you are very, very serious,” Mueller said to Leras, after accusing Leras of “willful blindness” for suggesting Mueller had not shown “compassion or concern” after she learned of the murder plot.
In a statement to this news organization, Leras — a former federal prosecutor who ran for Sacramento County DA in 2014 — praised the “outstanding” work by U.S. Marshals to keep him safe but lamented that “they were first informed of this threat in June, 13 months after it was first made.”
“Most defense attorneys feel their safety is not taken as seriously as the safety of prosecutors,” Leras said. “We’re the ones who are much more in harm’s way.”
The alleged plot is only the latest example of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood extending its reach beyond prison walls.
Earlier this year, a federal jury in Fresno convicted three gang leaders of a range of charges, including arranging the murder of two Russian mafia affiliates in Southern California. Since 2019, prosecutors say they’ve uncovered plots hatched by gang leaders with life sentences to rob, kidnap, torch, assault and kill various people, including a murder solicitation that was reportedly assigned to an undercover federal agent.
The plot to kill Leras was hatched in late April 2024, around the time that Leras was attempting to defend his client, Danny Troxell, against racketeering and conspiracy charges. DEA Special Agent Brian Nehring learned of it in late April 2024, but first believed the victim to be a prosecution witness.
It wasn’t until hours after Troxell and his co-defendants, Ronald Yandell and William Sylvester, were convicted of racketeering and murder conspiracy that prison officials say they came to the conclusion that Leras might have actually been the intended target. They warned him of the plot the morning after the verdict, coincidentally once there was no more chance of Leras using the information to request a mistrial for his client. Leras has said the timeline seems too perfect.
The same day Leras was warned, a seemingly unrelated event occurred 175 miles north of Sacramento, in the census-designated place of Shingletown, where an inter-agency drug task force raided the home of Donald Ulysses Maxwell, then 56, and seized 10 guns, including an illegal short-barreled rifle. The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Maxwell had been arrested on a federal murder conspiracy warrant, but then tried to walk back the claim as an innocent error, telling local media that this charge wasn’t accurate.
But it was: a criminal complaint drafted that month, but unsealed just last Aug. 29, details communications between Maxwell and an incarcerated Aryan Brotherhood member named Pat Brady, one of Yandell and Troxell’s co-defendants, who had already pleaded guilty to stabbing a man to death in prison. In one conversation, monitored by authorities, Brady alluded to something that had recently offended “the Tip,” a reference to the Aryan Brotherhood’s leadership.
“What happened, without going into it dude, it’s like a slap in the face to the Tip and anybody that’s associated to us man. It cannot stand bro,” Brady allegedly told Maxwell on April 23, 2024. He went to say that “Billy” — believed to be a reference to Sylvester — told Brady that Maxwell is “the only one we can really count on for something like this, that has the (expletive) heart to do it.”
Brady assured Maxwell he’d be getting a phone call soon, then arranged with another person for that call to be made, according to court records. Their preparations included informing Maxwell he would have to drive to the Sacramento area, offering to pay for his travel, and implying important people in the gang “are proud of you” and stressing the need to “get this done,” records show.
Maxwell died in February 2025, in Wasco State Prison, according to court records.
Yandell and Sylvester are in a federal prison in Atwater, serving life sentences. Earlier this year, prosecutors in Sacramento dropped an attempted murder case against Yandell, who had been charged with brandishing a knife at two state prison guards.
It was a tumultuous trial, the tension only worsened by an incident where Troxell and Yandell allegedly threatened to murder one another while being transported from court back to state prison, where they were serving life sentences.
There was a courtroom outburst as well, with Yandell referring to Leras as a “piece of (expletive)” and Leras retorting, “At least I’m not a rat.” That comment was a reference to a conversation Yandell and Sylvester had with a gang investigator, Cory Perryman, where they discussed an ongoing problem between the Mexican Mafia and Fresno Bulldogs gang, and discussed an unnamed Aryan Brotherhood member who “likes ice cream,” according to a transcript of the hearing.
Sylvester and Yandell have said the conversation was an example of CDCR creating misleading records to stir up problems between them and their co-defendants, arguing in court that Sylvester was clearly drunk on prison wine during the talk and that the transcript doesn’t line up with actual audio of the conversation. In an order denying a new trial for Troxell, Judge Mueller said that it was more likely Leras was targeted for a “personal” motive due to the “rat” comment, rather than something involving his scheduled closing argument.
Leras had contended that government’s failure to warn him earlier entitled Troxell to a reversed conviction, contending it proved the defense theory that Yandell and Sylvester had formed their own “more violent” conspiracy that went outside the more level-headed Aryan Brotherhood charter that Troxell represented. After his motion failed, Leras tried — and failed — to convince Mueller to let him withdraw from the case on Wednesday, leading to even more tension boiling over.
“There hasn’t seemed to be any compassion or concern…for what I went through for having an active murder on me for 18 months,” Leras told the judge, who immediately became cross.
“That’s completely uncalled for,” Mueller said, later adding, “I personally called the U.S. Marshal Service.”