Bryant Trial Figure Tells Jury He Was Drug Dealer : Courts: Alleged Family leader denies he was a kingpin or a killer. He suggests that evidence against him was planted.

Stanley Bryant, allegedly a leader of a ruthless, Pacoima-based crack cocaine syndicate, conceded to a Superior Court jury on Friday that he was a drug dealer. But he testified that he was no drug kingpin, and he definitely was no killer.

Bryant, also known by the nickname “Peanut Head,” suggested to the jury in Los Angeles that police had fabricated some of the evidence against him.

He is on trial with three alleged employees of the notorious Bryant Family cocaine ring for the Aug. 28, 1988, shooting deaths of four people--including a mother and 2-year-old child--in Lake View Terrace.

Bryant has spent more than six years in custody, while his case was delayed by legal maneuvering and sensational but largely unsubstantiated accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and alleged Family infiltration of several law enforcement agencies.

When the long-anticipated moment came, Bryant was low-key as he took his seat on the witness stand, wearing a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, khaki trousers and white tennis shoes. He admitted having sold drugs since 1982.

Bryant’s tone was matter-of-fact as his lawyer, Carl Jones, led him on a 20-minute litany of denials. Later, under Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick’s cross-examination, Bryant occasionally grew animated, labeling one investigator as “McCormick’s dope cop” and intimating that the officer had planted evidence.

Bryant denied being present at the crack house when the shootings occurred. He denied having any role in planning them. And, he denied being a top leader of the drug organization that bears his family’s name.

He said he learned about the shootings from television news.

But McCormick said prosecutors have two key pieces of physical evidence tying Bryant to the crime scene: fingerprints on a cellular phone, and on a slip of paper bearing one of the victims’ phone number. Other evidence includes phone and financial records and testimony by a former Family employee who claimed to have been present when the shootings occurred.

The prosecutor confronted Bryant with items seized from his briefcase and home during a police search. They included phone records that showed collect calls placed from prisons across the state, and a sheet of paper prosecutors claim is a cheat-sheet of Family code words to describe drug transactions.

“I wouldn’t write anything that stupid,” Bryant protested. “I couldn’t see anybody from the streets doing that. It had to be a cop.”

At first he conceded that the handwriting might be his, but later denied it.

He explained the prison calls, telling jurors: “In the area where I was staying at, a lot of people go to prison. I have a lot of friends and they stay in touch with me.”

He also denied that the Family was a drug organization that controlled crack cocaine distribution in certain areas. “It was all over Pacoima. There weren’t any main places,” he said. “I’d never call it an organization. I could buy it at any corner.”

Defense attorney Jones said that so far the prosecution has shown mountains of evidence of drug dealing, which the defense concedes, but little evidence tying the defendants to the slayings.

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Police and police and prosecutors allege that the Bryant Family ring racked up at least $1.6 million in sales for a three-month period in 1988. Its crack houses were so heavily fortified--with barred windows and a series of electronically operated, steel-mesh entrances--that police had to use battering rams to get inside.

The Family’s internecine power struggles erupted in violence seven years ago--claiming the lives of Loretha Anderson and Chemise English, a young mother and her 2-year-old child. They were shot, point-blank, as they waited in a car parked outside a Family crack house on Wheeler Avenue in Lake View Terrace.

At the same time, former Family hit man Andre Armstrong and James Brown, Armstrong’s partner in a fledgling crack operation in Monterey County, were ambushed and executed inside a steel security cage at the front entrance to the house.

Bryant and Family employees Donald Franklin Smith, John Preston Settle and LeRoy Wheeler could face the death penalty if convicted. Smith and Settle allegedly trapped the rivals inside the security cage and opened fire while Bryant drove away from the house.

Wheeler allegedly shot the woman and child, who were still fastened in their seat belts and listening to the car radio. Wheeler, a money-counter at the crack house, testified earlier that he was called that day and told not to come to work. He blamed the killings on the star prosecution witness, James Franklin Williams, known on the street as “Jay Baby.”

Earlier this month, Bryant’s mother and two brothers were indicted by a federal grand jury for their alleged roles in a conspiracy to evade income taxes on more than $600,000 in alleged drug money. Florence Bryant, 73, Jeff Bryant, 43, and Ely Bryant--a 42-year-old Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy-- are scheduled for arraignment in U. S. District Court on May 1.