Complex Trial Expected in Murder Case : Courts: Four defendants for whom a proceeding begins today belonged to a corporate-style drug ring, officials say.

Like the successful legitimate business that it mimicked, The Family was said to have a couple of hundred employees who earned paid vacations, drove company cars and even sported jackets with corporate logos.

But this organization, authorities say, operated a multimillion-dollar drug business in the San Fernando Valley and is believed responsible for at least 25 drug-related slayings, including the shooting of three adults and a child at a Lake View Terrace house allegedly used to shelter the proceeds of drug sales.

Four years after those deaths, four of nine defendants are set to stand trial on murder and drug conspiracy charges in what could be the longest and most complicated criminal proceeding in Los Angeles County since the McMartin Preschool molestation case. The other defendants will be tried separately starting within a month, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi said.

Scheduled to stand trial before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge J. D. Smith beginning today are Stanley Bryant, Jon Settle, Donald Smith--all in their 30s--and Le Roy Wheeler, who is in his early 20s. All are charged with four counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug conspiracy in connection with the Lake View Terrace slayings. All face the death penalty.

The other defendants include Tannis Curry, 30; Antonio Johnson, 33, and Nash Newbil, 56, all of whom are charged with four counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug conspiracy. Lamont Gillon, 23, and Andrew Settle, 30, are charged with drug conspiracy.

Although Maurizi said she hoped to wrap up the trial in a year, defense attorneys estimated that it could take as long as three years because of the large number of defendants and witnesses expected to be called to testify.

“It’s going to be a lengthy trial,” said Steve Flanagan, who represents Curry. “I’m looking forward to finally getting to trial and having my client exonerated so she can get on with her life. Everyone is a little anxious for this to begin.”

Police and prosecutors claim the defendants are part of a sophisticated, decade-old cocaine ring known as the Bryant Organization or, simply, The Family. They claim that, despite the arrest of its key leaders, the organization is still doing business in the Valley.

“The Family is still operating, still dealing drugs in the same quantity they did before,” according to Los Angeles Police Detective James Vojtecky, the lead homicide investigator on the case. “They’ve just changed their mode of operation.”

The case began Aug. 28, 1988, with the four shooting deaths at a house on Wheeler Avenue that was allegedly used to shelter drug money. Slain were Andre Louis Armstrong, 31; James Brown, 43; Loretha English, 23, and her 2-year-old daughter, Chemise.

Investigators said that Brown and Armstrong, a former Family associate who had been recently released from prison and was supposedly feuding with the Family, were lured to the house and shot to death.

A gunman then ran out to the car, where English, apparently just along for the ride, and her children were sitting. The gunman sprayed the car with bullets, killing English and wounding her year-old son. According to witnesses, the gunman then got into the car and shot Chemise in the back of the head.

The roots of the Family go back to the late ‘70s, investigators say, when the entrepreneurial Bryant brothers bought several houses in the East Valley, allegedly using money from a 1974 bank robbery to finance the deals.

Police believe that the group began selling cocaine in 1982. At one point the group had as many as 200 associates, even recruiting local athletes, and controlled much of the drug’s flow into the northeast Valley, investigators said. As the Family became more successful, it also became “increasingly violent,” Maurizi said.

Police say the business was so lucrative, with drug receipts estimated at $100,000 a week, that some associates received paid vacations, company cars and jackets with special insignia.

Six weeks after the slayings, police raided 26 houses where suspected members of the Bryant Organization lived or did business, recovering records that police said showed the group grossed at least $1.6 million quarterly from the sale of rock cocaine.

But it took three years to gather enough evidence to charge 12 suspects, most of them believed to be the top leaders and enforcers of the organization. After six separate preliminary hearings, some lasting months, and a grand jury session, all were ordered to stand trial. The 20,000 pages of investigative records that were compiled fill 58 binders.

Three of the defendants have since pleaded guilty. Anthony Arceneaux, 22, and William Settle, 34, both pleaded guilty earlier to drug conspiracy. Provine McCloria, 21, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting a crime.

Attached to the case is an army of lawyers and investigators. There are 17 defense attorneys, all appointed by the court. Seven defendants have been granted two attorneys each because they face the death penalty or life imprisonment if convicted. Each defendant also has at least one court-appointed investigator.

On the prosecution side, Maurizi heads a team of four deputy district attorneys and four investigators.

Defense attorneys estimate that the prosecution already has spent $2 million on the case and that the trials of the remaining defendants could wind up costing double that amount. The first trial in the McMartin case, by comparison, lasted 32 months from the start of jury selection to the verdicts and cost an estimated $15 million.

If murder convictions result, penalty deliberations could also be lengthy.

“It could take a couple of weeks to a couple of months just to get a jury” for the capital murder cases, Maurizi said. “The trick is to find people who can follow the complexities of the case and are willing to commit three years at $5 a day to the trial.”

Maurizi said that 700 subpoenas have been served potential witnesses. She expects more than 100 to testify, including one who prosecutors say can place the defendants at the scene of the shooting.

On Trial for Their Lives

The four suspects set to begin trial today include:

Stanley Bryant, charged with four counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug conspiracy. He faces the death penalty.

Jon Settle, charged with four counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug conspiracy, faces the death penalty.

Donald Smith, charged with four counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug conspiracy. He faces the death penalty.

Le Roy Wheeler, charged with four counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug conspiracy, faces the death penalty. He is accused of being the actual gunman in the deaths of the victims shot in the car.