Valley Drug Leader Guilty in ’88 Slayings

Stanley Bryant, a leader of the notorious San Fernando Valley cocaine ring that bears his family’s name, was convicted Wednesday of two counts of first-degree murder in the 1988 ambush of two drug rivals at a fortified Lake View Terrace crack house.

The Superior Court jury, which began deliberations a week ago following a 14-week trial in Los Angeles, delivered partial verdicts against Bryant. Then, in a rare turn of events, one juror was replaced by an alternate and the new panel was sent back to the jury room with instructions to start deliberations anew.

Still unresolved are murder counts involving the fatal shootings of a woman and child who were waiting outside the crack house in a parked car, and an attempted murder count for a second child cut by flying glass.

The jury also continues to consider identical charges against three other defendants, all alleged employees of the so-called Bryant family: Leroy Wheeler, 26; Donald Franklin Smith, 37, and Jon Preston Settle, 35.

The eight men and four women on the jury found the 37-year-old Bryant, also known by the nickname “Peanut Head,” guilty of first-degree murder for masterminding the slayings of former family hit man Andre Armstrong, 31, and his partner, James Brown, 43. The two men were trapped inside a cage-like metal security door and fired upon repeatedly by assailants armed with shotguns and pistols.

Like many other developments in the convoluted Bryant case, which has consumed six years and dozens of lawyers and cost more than $2.5 million to prosecute, the first guilty verdicts were delivered in unorthodox fashion. But they came with surprisingly little fanfare.

The jury returned its partial decision inside a nearly empty courtroom during the noon recess, and one juror was replaced after informing the judge that he faces possible knee surgery.

Superior Court Judge Charles E. Horan then sent the jury back to deliberate, instructing panel members to disregard any previous findings or decisions they had reached regarding the outstanding counts.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys declined to comment on the unusual proceeding, saying the judge had imposed a gag order. Consequently, it could not be determined why the deliberations were interrupted.

Later, Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson said a 1988 court precedent, People vs. Aikens, allows for seating alternate jurors after partial verdicts have been taken. The Aikens case states that such a scenario is permissible “as long as the jury is instructed to disregard all deliberations on the remaining counts and begin anew.”

The jury must also decide on special circumstances--including the multiple deaths and lying in wait--that could carry the death penalty for all four defendants.

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed the Bryant family as a sophisticated drug ring that raked in as much as $500,000 a month at its peak. With its hub a Pacoima pool hall and a dozen northeast Valley crack houses, the family, according to testimony, operated like a business, synchronizing its shifts with police roll calls and offering salaried employees paid vacation time and use of company cars. The product was flat “cookies” of crack cocaine distributed in 9-ounce stacks, according to testimony.

An internal power struggle for control of the lucrative empire set the scene for the bloody slayings in Lake View Terrace, prosecutors alleged.

Armstrong, a Bryant family hit man who was convicted in the 1982 slaying of cocaine customer Kenneth Gentry, demanded a piece of the business as a token of the family’s gratitude for his silence in the case.

Shortly before his release from prison, Armstrong, who admitted killing seven people, told investigators that the Bryants owed him and he intended to collect.

” . . . Just to squeeze them, you know, just to keep a little grip on them,” Armstrong said in a tape recording played for the jury. “We don’t want all of it. Just save some for when I get out.”

On Aug. 28, 1988, Armstrong arrived at the crack house on Wheeler Avenue, ostensibly for a meeting with Bryant. He was unarmed and smoking a cigarette as he entered with his partner, Brown. Brown’s girlfriend, Loretha Anderson, 23, and her two children, Chemise English, 2, and Carlos English, 1, waited in the car.

Former Bryant family money-counter James Franklin Williams IV, also known as “Jay Baby,” testified that Bryant ordered him to work late that day, and arrived at the house with Wheeler, Smith and a duffel bag full of guns.

Williams testified that Settle and Smith fired upon the two visitors while Bryant fled through the back door. Wheeler, carrying a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other, then walked out the door and shot the witnesses outside, prosecutors alleged.

The case took another odd twist during the closing arguments when Settle, serving as his own lawyer, told the jury that the evidence showed that Bryant and the others planned and carried out the killings.

“I don’t think James Williams is lying a whole lot,” Settle told the jury.