DALLAS _ Sixty-four people belonging to white supremacist gangs were sentenced to a combined 820 years in federal prison recently, the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Texas announced this week.
The mass sentencing caps an investigation that began in 2014 and included 153 total defendants tied to white supremacist gangs, said Erin Dooley, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office. In 2017, 89 of those defendants were convicted and sentenced to a combined 1,070 years in federal prison.
In the second round, the remaining 64 individuals were charged in 2018. The last defendant in the second round, 51-year-old Garry Cody Jones, was sentenced Thursday to more than 11 years in federal prison on a drug charge.
In addition to various drug and firearms charges, several defendants kidnapped, threatened, and assaulted people who they believed had stolen drug proceeds.
"Not only do white supremacist gangs endorse repugnant ideologies, they also facilitate a violent drug and gun trade, putting our citizens in grave danger," U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox said in a release Friday. "We were alarmed _ but not necessarily surprised _ at the quantities of drugs and firearms recovered during this investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to dismantle these organizations, disrupt their criminal activities, and put their members behind bars."
The majority of the defendants had prior violent criminal histories, including a combined 587 convictions, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
