San Fernando Valley : Final Sentence Given in Bryant Drug Case

Jon Preston Settle, the last man convicted in the long, San Fernando Valley-based Bryant family drug and murder case, was sentenced Wednesday to 21 years and 4 months in state prison--the maximum he could have received under a plea bargain with prosecutors.

His defense lawyer, Richard Leonard, said the admitted drug dealer and killer could be released in seven years because of the time he has spent in 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 was to enroll in a prison-based work program. If Settle seeks protective custody as he has often discussed, that would preclude him from participating in a work program, McCormick said.

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

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 selling empire 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 a guilty verdict.