Edgar Diaz, 23, was a member of the Down Below Gang, which operated in the Sunnydale housing project

Edgar Diaz, 23, was a member of the Down Below Gang, which operated in the Sunnydale housing project in the Visitacion Valley district of San Francisco. Prosecutors said the gang sold crack cocaine and other drugs and protected its turf with violence and murder.Diaz pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco in November to participating in a racketeering conspiracy that included three murders and several attempted murders personally committed by Diaz.The 40-year sentence handed down by Alsup on Tuesday was agreed to by prosecutors and defense lawyers in the plea bargain.Before the guilty plea, Diaz faced the possibility of a rare federal death penalty if his case had gone to trial and he had been convicted. The U.S. Justice Department had authorized local federal prosecutors to seek a death penalty.Alsup referred to the three murders during the sentencing and said, "In a way, it's hard to accept the sentence of only 40 years, as long as that is."But the judge said he had to defer to prosecutors' decision to reach a plea agreement.
A second gang member, Emile Fort, 27, continues to face a possible death penalty if convicted of three different murders he is accused of in connection with racketeering.Fort is due to go on trial in Alsup's court on Feb. 23.Diaz and Fort are among 12 members of the gang indicted in an 86-count indictment in October 2005. The 10 others have pleaded guilty to various charges.One of them, Raymon Milburn, was sentenced by Alsup Tuesday to seven years in prison for his guilty plea on a charge of conspiring to murder a man who was a potential prosecution witness against Fort.

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Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the

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