Hearing for Brando Begins : Sentencing: The killing of his half-sister’s boyfriend was not an accident, a detective says.

There is no evidence to support the claim of Marlon Brando’s son that he accidentally shot and killed his half-sister’s Tahitian lover during a struggle over a gun, a Los Angeles police investigator testified Tuesday.

Homicide Detective Andrew Monsue was the first witness called by prosecutors at what is expected to be a lengthy Santa Monica Superior Court hearing to determine the sentence Christian Brando will serve for his guilty plea to voluntary manslaughter.

The 32-year-old self-employed welder and admitted alcoholic has been free on bail secured by his father’s hilltop estate, where the slaying occurred nine months ago.

Brando contends that he fired the bullet accidentally after he returned home drunk from a dinner with his 20-year-old half-sister, Cheyenne Brando, who was pregnant and had just told him that her boyfriend, Dag Drollet, was beating her.

Tests at the police station showed Brando had a 0.19% blood-alcohol level after the shooting, Monsue testified. He said the suspect did not appear to be drunk and several people told police that Brando had several drinks while waiting for police to arrive after the shooting.

Drollet, 26, the father of Cheyenne’s child and the son of a political figure in French-ruled Tahiti, was shot once in the left cheek at point-blank range as he was watching television May 17.

“We wrestled around with the goddamned gun,” Brando told police in a taped statement played at the hearing.

Monsue testified that he “did not find anything to indicate a struggle in the room.”

Drollet’s body was found reclining on the couch, apparently in the same position he was in when he was shot. A TV remote control was in his right hand; tobacco, rolling papers and a butane lighter were in his left hand, Monsue said.

Marlon Brando, who is paying for his son’s defense and who has abandoned his usual reclusiveness to attend court sessions, is expected to testify during the defense’s presentation.

The hearing, virtually a mini-trial on whether the shooting was premeditated, is expected to last much of the week.

Prosecutors, who originally charged Brando with murder, are asking Judge Robert Thomas to impose the maximum prison term for voluntary manslaughter--16 years. Deputy Dist. Attys. Steven Barshop and William Clark contended in their sentencing recommendation that Brando is “vicious, callous and a serious danger to society” with a violent past.

Defense attorneys have asked for leniency. A report by county probation officials recommended a three-year term and also an unspecified length of additional jail time because Brando used a gun in his crime.

Brando, in an interview with The Times published Tuesday, said he burst in on Drollet and, pointing a gun at him, said: “Lookit, don’t do that (beat Cheyenne) anymore!”

He said that as he turned to leave, Drollet grabbed the gun and it fired.

“I did not go into that room to kill Dag Drollet,” Brando said in the interview. “I just wanted to scare him. I just sat there and watched the life go out of this guy.”

Cheyenne reportedly told prosecutors that the shooting was intentional and that her half-brother had spoken several times about killing Drollet. After the shooting, Cheyenne flew to her native Tahiti, where she gave birth to Drollet’s son, Tookie. Since then, she has twice attempted suicide there.

The statement Brando made to police after the shooting was ruled inadmissible as evidence at the trial because police failed to tell him he had the right to a court-appointed lawyer if he could not afford his own.

Prosecutors dropped their effort to try Brando for first-degree murder and agreed to let him plead guilty last month to voluntary manslaughter after it became clear they would be unable to persuade officials in Tahiti to compel Cheyenne’s return to California.