Murder Trial of Drug Ring Suspects Begins : Courts: Prosecutors allege that members of well-organized Bryant Family killed a mother, her 2-year-old and two dealers.

Prosecutors opened the drug and murder trial of a notorious cocaine ring Tuesday by painting a riveting portrait of a gang so sophisticated that it synchronized its dealers’ work schedules with police roll calls so that street sales could be conducted before patrol cars were deployed.

Members of the San Fernando Valley-based Bryant Family were so careful, Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury, that they gave rock cocaine customers a receipt for their cash at one house and then sent them to another location to pick up their drugs.

Moreover, within the family’s network of northeast Valley crack houses, workers always kept a pot of hot oil or battery acid on the kitchen stove in case police showed up, for emergency disposal of the ring’s trademark rock cocaine.

The ring racked up at least $1.6 million in sales for a three-month period in 1988, McCormick said, adding that its crack houses were so heavily fortified--with barred windows and electronically operated, steel-mesh entrances--that police had to use battering rams to get inside.

“This is one of the biggest, most financially lucrative and violent dope dealing organizations you have ever seen,” McCormick said.

It was so ruthless, he said, that seven years ago, a mother and her 2-year-old child were shot at point-blank range outside one crack house, as they waited for two mid-level drug dealers who were executed inside.

Those Aug. 28, 1988, murders in Lake View Terrace are at the center of the case, which was delayed for years by legal maneuvering and sensational, pretrial allegations claiming misconduct by prosecutors and Bryant Family infiltration of several law enforcement agencies.

All four defendants--alleged cocaine boss Stanley Bryant and his purported employees Donald Franklin Smith, John Preston Settle and LeRoy Wheeler--could face the death penalty if convicted.

All are charged with four counts of murder--one each for the deaths of Andre Armstrong, James Brown, Brown’s girlfriend Loretha Anderson, and her daughter Chemise English.

They are also charged with one count of attempted murder for the injuries suffered by Anderson’s infant son, Carlos English Jr., who was cut by shattered glass in the back seat of the car.

McCormick told jurors Tuesday that Armstrong was a convicted hit man for the Bryant Family who had been blackmailing the ring’s leaders from prison in St. Louis, Mo., and was plotting to take over their empire when he was freed.

Once he was released, in July, 1988, Armstrong joined Brown and a third prison friend in Monterey, where the Bryant Family had set them up in a branch of its interstate ring, McCormick said.

But Armstrong wasn’t satisfied, McCormick said, and he drove to Los Angeles to confront Stanley Bryant, who ran the family with his brother Jeff and knew of Armstrong’s ambitions.

When Armstrong and Brown arrived at a Bryant Family crack house on Wheeler Avenue about 5 p.m. on that Sunday afternoon, Smith and Settle trapped them within a steel security cage at the house’s entrance and opened fire, killing them, as their boss Stan Bryant drove away, according to the charges.

Then Wheeler went outside with a sawed-off shotgun and a .357-magnum pistol and shot Anderson first through the car window and then went inside the Toyota Camry to shoot the woman through the base of her neck, McCormick said.

Wheeler’s defense lawyer said authorities are charging the wrong man for the deaths of the mother and child, which he blamed on a key prosecution witness he said strongly resembles Wheeler.

The witness, James Franklin Williams IV, “cut a sweetheart deal” in which he would testify against the other Bryant Family employees in exchange for immunity from murder charges, said defense attorney Bill McKinney.

“Even on Valentine’s Day you couldn’t beat this deal,” said McKinney, who said Williams was a convicted drug dealer who ran afoul of the law even while on a witness-protection program in Minnesota.

McKinney acknowledged that Wheeler worked for the Bryant Family counting money, but said he worked the graveyard shift at the Wheeler Avenue house and was gone by the time of the 5 p.m. killings. However, prosecution witness Williams normally worked from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., McKinney said, and stayed late the day of the murders to help his boss and win a promotion.

Settle also attacked Williams’ credibility and claimed he too was not present during the slayings.

Instead, the executions were carried out by a Bryant Family member who remains in hiding, suggested Settle, who is defending himself in the trial. That man is a friend of Williams, who is covering up for him, Settle said.

As he addressed the jury, Settle explained that he was representing himself “because this is a truth-seeking process and I feel the best way to get at the truth is through the defendant.”

He had prepared a number of charts, including one stapled with pay stubs from legitimate jobs and showed jurors a photograph of his wife and daughter, which he had pinned to a bulletin board.

“There’s no way I’d aid and abet someone killing a woman and a child because my wife and child are the two most important things in my life--and here they are,” Settle said.

Settle said he became unwittingly involved with the Bryant Family in 1986, after he lost a job because of an injury and was facing foreclosure on his Lake View Terrace home.