21-Year Term Ends Bryant Family Murder Trials

Jon Preston Settle, the last man convicted in the long, San Fernando Valley-based “Bryant Family” drug and murder case, was sentenced as expected Wednesday to 21 years and four months in state prison--the maximum possible under a plea bargain with prosecutors.

His attorney, Richard Leonard, said the admitted drug dealer and killer could be released in seven years because of time he has already spent in the county jail awaiting trial and because time off for good behavior could cut his remaining sentence in half.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick disagreed, saying the only way to rack up credit for early parole is to enroll in a prison-based work program. If Settle seeks protective custody as he has discussed, that would preclude him from participating in a work program, McCormick said.

“Based on what he claims is a need to stay in protective custody,” McCormick said, “he won’t get to develop any good work time.”

The case stemmed from the 1988 slayings in Lake View Terrace of two rival drug dealers and two witnesses, including a 2-year-old girl.

Aside from its sheer brutality--the slain men were trapped inside a metal security cage before they were shot to death, and a mother and her children were fired upon in a parked car--it helped expose the inner workings of the so-called Bryant Family, then a powerful crack-cocaine organization based in the northeast Valley.

Settle--a thin, soft-spoken man who represented himself during a lengthy trial last year--was the only one of four defendants to elude conviction for first-degree murder. The other three were sentenced to death.

Settle escaped the same fate as the others--Stanley Bryant, LeRoy Wheeler and Donald Franklin Smith--by a single vote when a Los Angeles Superior Court jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of a guilty verdict.

Rather than retry the complicated case, prosecutors agreed to let Settle plead guilty to lesser charges--four counts of voluntary manslaughter for the deaths of Bryant Family hitman Andre Armstrong; Armstrong’s partner, James Brown; Brown’s girlfriend, Loretha Anderson, and Anderson’s daughter, Chemise English.

Earlier in January, Settle pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Anderson’s 1-year-old son, Carlos English Jr., and to using a firearm in each of those crimes--a total of 10 counts. He was then convicted by Judge Charles E. Horan, who warned him he would probably receive the maximum sentence.

The judge made his warning come true Wednesday after Settle read a four-page, handwritten statement in which he apologized to the families of the victims and said he was happy to spare the county further expense.

About 25 of Settle’s relatives, including his parents and five brothers, were in court for the sentencing. Several had written the judge letters on Settle’s behalf.