3 Bryant Family Members Given Death Sentences

San Fernando Valley drug lord Stanley Bryant, head of a once-thriving crack cocaine empire based in Pacoima, and two of his associates were sentenced Thursday to be executed for the 1988 slayings of two rivals and two witnesses, including a 2 1/2-year-old girl.

The death sentences had been expected for Bryant, Donald Franklin Smith and LeRoy Wheeler, who were convicted last summer by a jury that recommended the death penalty. They showed no reaction when Superior Court Judge Charles E. Horan officially ordered them to be put to death.

The judge showed no misgivings as he sentenced the men one by one.

During a brief hearing in Downtown Los Angeles, Horan said he “shed no tears” for two of the victims, Andre Armstrong and James Brown, a hit man for the so-called Bryant Family gang and his drug-dealing partner, who were gunned down at a crack house in Lake View Terrace.

But Horan called the deaths of the other two victims--Brown’s girlfriend and her toddler daughter--”mind-boggling.” In sentencing Wheeler, the baby-faced drug dealer who was convicted of shooting the mother and child at point-blank range, Horan told him:

“You absolutely deserve to get the death penalty.”

“I could not agree with Judge Horan any more,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick said later, “and I think that echoes the feeling of all of the jurors.”

McCormick, who handled the case for more than three years, added that he was gratified “we were able to convey to the jury the detriment this organization caused to the community over a long period of time, and I think their verdict represents what the community’s feeling is about the appropriate penalty for these people.”

Defense lawyers could not be reached for comment.

The sentences will automatically be appealed to the California Supreme Court.

A fourth defendant in the murder case, Jon Preston Settle, won a mistrial last June, and prosecutors are still deciding whether to retry him. Meanwhile, in a separate case, Stanley Bryant’s two brothers and 73-year-old mother are facing trial on federal tax charges.

The quadruple-murder trial centered on what authorities described as a vast organized crime ring known as the Bryant Family, run by Stanley (Peanut Head) Bryant and his brother, Jeff, out of a Pacoima billiards hall and a network of heavily fortified crack houses.

So lucrative was the Family’s trade that, at one point during the 1980s, police seized records showing $1.5 million in crack cocaine sales in just three months. It was so sophisticated, prosecutors said, that Family employees had work schedules with vacations, and their shifts were synchronized to daily roll calls at police stations so that business could be conducted when there were the fewest patrol cars on the street.

Authorities have linked Bryant Family members to more than a dozen drug killings during the past two decades--the most notorious of which was the Aug. 28, 1988, shooting on Wheeler Avenue that claimed the life of Armstrong and his friends.

Armstrong was a convicted Family hit man who was intent on collecting compensation for the years he served in prison and had boasted of plans to take over at least a piece of the Bryant empire himself. But when he and his partner, Brown, went to one of the Bryants’ cash-counting houses for an initial payment of $500, they were trapped inside a metal security cage at the house’s entrance and shot dead through the bars.

Then Wheeler walked outside to where Brown’s girlfriend, Loretha Anderson, and her children sat waiting in a parked car, still strapped in their seat belts. He shot Anderson, then her daughter Chemise English, 2 1/2. One-year-old Carlos English Jr. was injured by flying glass but survived.

After the arrests, the prosecution was stalled by a series of sensational pretrial allegations. First, prosecutors contended in court papers that the Bryant Family was so powerful that it had infiltrated the Los Angeles Police Department and district attorney’s office, among other agencies.

That prompted defense lawyers to charge that if those claims were true, then the county prosecutors had a conflict of interest and should turn the case over to the state attorney general’s office. They also accused the main investigator, LAPD Detective Jim Vojtecky, and lead prosecutor Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi of badgering a witness into changing her story and withholding evidence of what they had done.

A Superior Court judge found in January, 1993, that the district attorney’s office had indeed badly botched the case, and reassigned it to the state. The state appealed, saying its Los Angeles staff was already overworked. The case was returned to county prosecutors, but Maurizi was replaced by McCormick and Deputy Dist. Atty. Dale Davidson.

Finally, the trial began last February under tight security, but the once-prominent case received scant attention because of the O.J. Simpson murder trial down the hall.

On June 8, Bryant, 37, alleged mastermind of the quadruple slayings, was convicted on four counts of murder. So was Wheeler, 26, while 37-year-old Smith was found guilty of two counts of murder for the deaths of the two men. A month later the jury recommended the death penalty for all three.

Settle, 35, won a mistrial June 14. He represented himself in court, testifying against the others, and contending he was never at the murder scene. Settle is scheduled to appear before Horan on Nov. 14, but a plea-bargain is under discussion, according to McCormick and defense attorney Richard A. Leonard.

As the murder trial unfolded in the state Criminal Courts Building, three other Bryant Family members were indicted in the federal courthouse across the street on charges of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.

Alleged Family leader Jeff Andrew Bryant Jr., 43, who was in prison during the Wheeler Avenue slayings; his brother, Ely Bryant, 42, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, and their mother, Florence Bryant, are scheduled to go on trial in January.

All are accused in the April 13 indictment of trying to conceal the source, ownership and taxable nature of more than $630,000.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Monica Bachner declined to comment on the case she is prosecuting, but McCormick said there was no question that the source of the money was the Bryant Family drug trade.

“None had jobs other than Ely and all he used that for was a means of some obvious, legitimate income. But I think his, and all their incomes, was always narcotics,” McCormick said.

He also said that the Bryant Family drug empire was probably still operating “in some fashion or other” with individual members working the trade “but not nearly to the degree it was.”

“For all intents and purposes,” McCormick said, “the organization that the Valley feared for years is now deceased.”

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Closing a Saga of Drugs, Murder

Thursday’s death sentence for three members of the Bryant Family drug and murder ring draws to a close one of the longest-running and most expensive criminal cases in the San Fernando Valley. The case ran more than seven years, had cost more than $2.5 million by 1992 and used dozens of lawyers.

The Murder Victims

Andre Armstrong, 31: Convicted Bryant Family hit man.

James Brown, 43: Armstrong’s drug dealing partner.

Loretha Anderson, 23: Brown’s girlfriend.

Chemise English, 2: Daughter of Anderson.

Highlights of the Case

The Murders: (Aug. 28, 1988) Bryant Family hit man Andre Armstrong, companion James Brown, Brown’s girlfriend Loretha Anderson and her 2-year-old daughter, Chemise English are killed in a shotgun ambush at a Lake View Terrace crack house.

The Arrests: (Sept. 29, 1988) 200 police officers bearing search warrants raid 26 houses and arrests 12 people. Among those arrested are alleged leader Stanley Bryant. (Aug. 6, 1991) Jon Settle, last of the suspects, is arrested.

Legal Maneuvering: (January, 1993) Superior Court judge reassigns case to state attorney general’s office at the request of Bryant Family lawyers who accuse the DA’s office of coercing a witness. (March 16, 1994) Case is returned to D.A.’s office.

The Verdicts: (June 8, 1995) Stanley Bryant, Donald Smith and LeRoy Wheeler are convicted of all four murders. (June 14, 1995) Mistrial declared in murder case of Jon Settle, who served as his own attorney.

The Sentencing: (July 24, 1995) Jury asks for death penalty for Stanley Bryant, Leroy Wheeler and Donald Smith.

Sentenced to Death

Stanley Bryant, 37: A leader of the Bryant Family. Nicknamed “Peanut Head.”

LeRoy Wheeler, 26

Donald Franklin Smith, 37

Source: Times staff