Owners of Deer Face Yuletide Cruelty Trial : Courts: Judge turns down their request to delay the case until after Christmas. Father and son deny a charge they abused their animal.

The timing, the defendants contend, is too damaging to be a coincidence. Charged with cruelty to a reindeer, they face trial virtually on the eve of Christmas.

“There’s some hidden agenda on the part of the city attorney to bring this to trial before Christmas,” defense attorney James R. Tweedy complained Friday, arguing that prosecutors jockeyed the trial into the holiday period in order to portray the defendants as the grinches who killed Rudolph.

Prosecutors scoffed at the notion that they would calculatedly try to maneuver the trial into a time period when jurors might be feeling particularly unsympathetic to alleged reindeer-abusers.

Siding with the prosecution, San Fernando Municipal Court Judge L. Jeffrey Wiatt denied a defense request to delay the trial of Stuart Miller and his son William until after Christmas. Jury selection began immediately.

The Millers, who ran a major San Fernando Valley Christmas tree business in prior years, have been charged with one count of cruelty to an animal in the death of one of their herd of deer and one count of possessing wild animals without a license. They could be sentenced to up to a year in jail and fined up to $21,000 if convicted on both counts.

The deer were displayed at the Millers’ tree sales lots to remind buyers of Santa’s reindeer during the holiday season, and they were kept in several pens around the area the rest of the year. The creatures are not actually reindeer, but European fallow deer pressed into service as reasonable facsimiles of their larger cousins.

One of a herd of eight died Aug. 10 at a yard in Granada Hills where the Millers kept the animals, in what city animal control officers said were unhealthy conditions. The animals had insufficient water and the one that died had 15 feet of chicken wire and coat hangers tangled in its antlers and around its neck--showing that the fencing used was dangerous to the animals--the prosecution argues.

Animal control officers were forced to lasso it to remove the junk endangering it, they said, but shortly after that, the animal died. The officers had earlier that month posted warnings at the site, ordering that the deer’s living conditions be improved.

The Millers, however, blame the officers for the death.

The officers were so eager to embarrass the Millers in a running dispute over the treatment of the deer that they hogtied the ailing animal to keep it in place until a Times photographer could arrive to get a picture of it, said Stuart Miller, 52, to reporters outside the courtroom.

He also blamed The Times, saying the newspaper acted “so they could get a trash story . . . at the deer’s expense, the deer’s life.”

“My son Will and I are not, nor ever have been, guilty of cruelty to animals,” he said, arguing that many people who live near his deer pens could attest to the good care he gave the animals.

But the prosecutor, Deputy City Atty. Norman Wegner, told reporters that the deer “was already in extremely dire straits,” due to “the fairly callous neglect of the condition of the animal” and that the Millers cannot blame the animal control officers for trying to save it.

Wegner said the Millers took good care of the deer during the Christmas season, but neglected them in the off-season.

Animal control officers said they made two trips to the Granada Hills pen after receiving complaints from neighbors in August. On their second visit, on Aug. 10, they found the deer writhing in pain, with pieces of the fence stuck in its antlers, Wegner said.

Officers had found the herd’s metal water tubs empty on their first trip, Wegner said, and posted a warning that the site had to be cleaned and the fence mended.

Although the Millers have been prominent in the Valley at Christmas for years, Stuart Miller said that a personal bankruptcy, unconnected to his Christmas tree sales, has closed down the family business this year. He is still active in Christmas tree farms in Oregon, he said, and his son is working for another Christmas tree operation.

The senior Miller opened his first Christmas tree lot as a teen-ager in Granada Hills. The enterprise grew into Miller & Sons Christmas Tree Co. of Mission Hills, which proclaimed itself the “McDonald’s of the Christmas tree business,” operating as many as 50 lots in California, including eight in the Valley.

Miller was known for hardball business practices, which included suing smaller Christmas tree dealers and quarreling with neighbors who complained about noise and light from his lots.

His most famous quarrel pitted him against the Cicero family, longtime operators of Valley farming operations, a battle that lasted several years and came to be dubbed “The Christmas Tree Wars.”

Miller brought legal actions complaining that it was unfair competition to sell trees from farmland the Ciceros leased at Pierce College. Miller contended that other tree sellers should have been able to bid on the site, as publicly owned land.

He succeeded at one point in getting college administrators to order the Ciceros off the land, but the Ciceros attracted widespread public sympathy and were allowed to remain.