Separate Trials Upheld in Bryant Family Murder Case : Crime: Conspiracy allegations prompt defense to ask that prosecution be turned over to the state.

Prosecutors’ allegations that the Bryant family crime ring had infiltrated the district attorney’s office and the Los Angeles Police Department were not enough to persuade a state appellate court Tuesday to overturn a Superior Court judge’s ruling ordering separate trials on drug conspiracy and murder charges for seven alleged members of the ring.

However, the allegations--included in the appeal filed by prosecutors--prompted defense attorneys to ask the trial judge to turn over prosecution of the case to the state attorney general’s office. They argued that if the allegations are true, prosecutors have a conflict of interest because their co-workers could be co-conspirators.

Superior Court Judge J.D. Smith on Tuesday delayed the start of the murder trial until Nov. 2 to rule on the motion by attorneys representing defendant LeRoy Wheeler, 23.

Seven alleged members of the Lake View Terrace-based crime network are accused of killing two rival drug dealers and two witnesses and of operating a ring that supplied drugs throughout the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Attorney Carl Jones, who represents Stanley Bryant, 34, the alleged ring leader, also had asked Smith to order Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi not to discuss the case outside the courtroom. Smith denied the motion, saying he hoped that prosecutors and defense attorneys would, on their own, refrain from trying the case in the media.

Jones said he is concerned that the inflammatory allegations by prosecutors could make it difficult to obtain a fair trial for his client.

“It could make it difficult, if not impossible, to find an unbiased jury that has not been tainted by all the publicity, most of it negative, for my client,” Jones said.

Maurizi could not be reached for comment, and Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, declined to discuss the motion to remove prosecutors from the case.

Last week, Smith ruled that prosecutors could not pursue drug conspiracy charges against seven people in connection with their trial in a 1988 quadruple murder, arguing that the combined charges would make the trial--expected to last at least a year--even longer.

In her appeal--which the state Court of Appeal denied without comment--Maurizi alleged that members of the crime ring had penetrated law enforcement agencies. She was trying to show that the ring had become highly sophisticated in controlling the distribution of cocaine in the Valley since the early 1980s.

She described the network as employing more than 200 people and having a monthly gross income of $1 million.

Without the drug conspiracy charges, Maurizi is limited in the amount and the type of evidence she can introduce and she had argued that without such evidence, she would lose the “heart and soul” of the murder case.

Maurizi’s allegations are not new. Police investigators have suggested such infiltration since the late 1980s but have never been able to provide evidence to support their charges.

Police Lt. John Dunkin said Tuesday that he is not aware of any previous internal investigation of the allegations and that there is no such investigation under way.

The case stems from the murders of Andre Louis Armstrong, 31; James Brown, 43; Loretha English, 23, and her 2-year-old daughter, Chemise.The two men were allegedly killed on a Lake View Terrace street to eliminate competition in drug sales. The woman and her child were slain, prosecutors say, because they witnessed the murders.

In addition to Bryant and Wheeler, other defendants include Jon Settle, 31; Donald Smith, 33; Tannis Curry, 30; Antonio Johnson, 33; and Nash Newbil, 56.