SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) – Four leaders of a highly organized white supremacist prison gang went on trial Tuesday on charges they orchestrated the slayings or attempted slayings of more than 30 inmates during three decades of violence at some of the nation’s toughest penitentiaries.

Forty members of the Aryan Brotherhood are charged with gang activity at six federal prisons stretching from California to Illinois and four California state prisons. Sixteen of the defendants could face the death penalty in one of the largest capital punishment cases ever filed in U.S. history.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Emmick opened the case against the first four defendants with a slide that read, “The Aryan Brotherhood: Blood in, Blood out.”

The phrase – borrowed from the gang itself – means inmates must commit a murder to join the gang and can only leave when they die, Emmick said.

“This case is fundamentally about power and control of the nation’s prisons,” he told jurors.

The indictment alleges a web of conspiracies to kill inmates who offended gang members, cheated on drug deals, failed to comply with leaders’ orders or snitched to prison authorities. The alleged crimes also include orchestrating a prison war against a black gang that resulted in at least two killings.

Defense attorney Dean Steward, who represents Barry “The Baron” Mills, said nearly all of the government’s case was based on jailhouse informants who had been coached and had months to get their stories straight.

“Ninety percent of the evidence is going to be the testimony of these 42 inmate witnesses, and every single one will be getting something,” Steward said.

In another case, an Aryan Brotherhood member allegedly ordered a hit on an inmate who flicked a packet of sugar and spit milk at Edgar “The Snail” Hevle, another of the men on trial.

Emmick said the gang even went after its own when a member was ordered killed because he fell in love with a female gang associate he had been told to murder. Another was targeted because his wife on the outside refused to smuggle drugs into the prison for the gang, the prosecutor said.

Emmick acknowledged that some informants received money and were granted reduced sentences or immunity in exchange for their help. “We will present them, warts and all, and ask you to consider their testimony,” he said.

The gang members would communicate by hiding tiny messages in mop handles, under rocks and in peanut halves glued back together, Emmick said. They spoke to each other through air vents or toilet pipes, he said.

On Tuesday, the defendants were dressed in starched shirts, used glasses and nodded politely to jurors and the judge. They were surrounded by federal marshals and chained to the floor with leg irons obscured from the jury by a high panel.

Mills, an alleged gang ringleader, is serving two life terms for murder after nearly decapitating an inmate in 1979. In the current trial, he faces a possible death sentence for allegedly orchestrating the 1997 killings of the two black inmates in Pennsylvania. He is accused of having a hand in all but one of the crimes listed in the indictment, Emmick said.

Another defendant, 58-year-old Tyler Davis “The Hulk” Bingham, could face the death penalty for the same alleged crimes.

Also on trial are Hevle, 54, and Christopher Overton Gibson, 46, who both could face life in prison if convicted.