Bryant Family Drug-Murder Trial Begins : Courts: Case involving four slayings and a Valley-based ring dates back to 1988.

Just down the hall from O.J. Simpson’s courtroom, a less famous trial has quietly begun that involves four murders, an interstate drug ring based in the San Fernando Valley, and a history of legal maneuvering that has consumed years of court time and millions of dollars in public funds.

It is the Bryant Family drug and murder case, a behemoth of a prosecution that began in 1988 in Lake View Terrace with the slayings of two alleged drug dealers and two witnesses, including a 2-year-old child.

On Tuesday, nearly seven years and 40,000 pages of discovery later, jury selection began in Los Angeles Superior Court for a trial that could last six months. But time has dulled the public’s memory of the once-prominent case, now eclipsed by the Simpson and Rodney G. King sagas, and prosecutors expect no trouble seating a jury.

“I don’t think I’ve found a single person who’s heard of it,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick said this week as he reviewed a stack of juror questionnaires.

The case centers on what prosecutors allege was a sophisticated and ruthless organized-crime ring known as the Bryant Family--or simply, the Family--which was based in the northeast Valley and so lucrative it raked in as much as $500,000 a month in rock cocaine sales.

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Authorities contend that four people were murdered on Aug. 28, 1988, because one of them, a convicted Family hit man named Andre Armstrong, was intent on collecting payment for the years he served in prison. He had boasted of plans to take over the cocaine-dealing empire.

But when he went to one of the ring’s cash-counting houses for an initial payment of $500, prosecutors say, Armstrong and a companion, James Brown, were ambushed by Family members who locked them in a metal security cage and opened fire with shotguns and .357-magnum handguns through the bars.

Immediately after, Brown’s girlfriend, Loretha Anderson, and her daughter, 28-month-old Chemise English, were shot dead as they waited outside the house in a Toyota Camry--still strapped into their seat belts, according to McCormick. Anderson’s son, 1-year-old Carlos English Jr., was injured by shattered glass but survived.

The mother and children were later found in their car, parked around the corner from the Wheeler Avenue crack house, while the bodies of Brown and Armstrong were dumped in Lopez Canyon.

All four defendants--alleged mastermind Stanley Bryant, Donald Franklin Smith, John Preston Settle and LeRoy Wheeler--are charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. All four have been in custody awaiting trial since 1988.

All but Settle have criminal records, and Wheeler is scheduled for trial in another murder case after this one concludes.

McCormick would not discuss his case. But according to court records and a defense attorney, key evidence will include the account of a Family employee named James Franklin Williams IV, who was in the cash-counting house during the shootings and has agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for immunity.

Prosecutors also hope to introduce an audiotape by hit man Armstrong on which he discusses his plans to hold Bryant and his brother Jeffrey--the ring’s alleged leader--financially responsible for his prison time, according to court records.

One defense lawyer said Tuesday that the government’s evidence does not support its elaborate theories, which have portrayed the Bryant brothers and their associates as a well-organized Mafia-style group.

“This case is really about a very obsessive LAPD detective who has blown things all out of proportion,” said Louise Gulartie, one of Stanley Bryant’s attorneys. She referred to Los Angeles Police Detective John Vojtecky, a lead investigator in the case.

Defense lawyer Richard Leonard, who is helping Settle to defend himself, also suggested that a standard drug-dealing case had been exaggerated by authorities.

“But for the killing of the woman and her child, it’s your run-of-the-mill, dope dealers killing case, and they probably wouldn’t be seeking the death penalty,” Leonard said.

But the case is also distinguished by a sensational series of pretrial allegations that stalled the prosecution for years and, as of 1992, had amassed legal fees estimated at $2.5 million.

First, prosecutors claimed in court papers that the 200-member Bryant Family was so powerful it had infiltrated the Los Angeles Police Department and county district attorney’s office, among other public agencies.

A former Van Nuys prosecutor and lower-level employees in his office had been Family associates, they claimed.

Defense lawyers responded that if the claims were true, then county prosecutors had a conflict of interest and should turn the case over to the state attorney general’s office.

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They also accused Vojtecky and the lead prosecutor in the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi, of badgering a witness into changing her story and then withholding evidence of what they had done.

In January, 1993, Superior Court Judge J. D. Smith found that the district attorney’s office had botched the case so badly it should not continue the prosecution. In response to defense motions, Smith reassigned the case to the state attorney general’s office.

But the state appealed, saying its legal staff in Los Angeles was already overworked. An appeals court agreed, and in March, 1994, the prosecution was returned to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

In the meantime, Gil Garcetti replaced Ira Reiner as district attorney, the complex case was evaluated again, and prosecutor Maurizi was replaced by McCormick.

Defense lawyers then asked the state Supreme Court to review the matter in an effort to return the case to the attorney general’s office. But late last year, the high court denied their petition and allowed it to remain in county hands.

This week, McCormick declined to discuss the case’s legal history or whether the misconduct allegations would surface again during trial.

“This case is no different than any other gang-related homicide,” he said.