Witness in Bryant Trial Admits He Fears Testifying : Courts: G.T. Fisher denies knowledge of alleged drug ring’s members but prosecutors taped him saying he would lie to save his life.

A witness in the Bryant Family murder trial told prosecutors he was afraid to testify against members of the alleged Pacoima-based drug ring and would lie if necessary to save his life--an admission that was secretly tape-recorded and played in court Thursday before a rapt jury.

“If I put you on the stand in front of the jurors, what are you going to tell them?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick asked the witness, G.T. Fisher, before his scheduled testimony in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m afraid, I’m, you know, it’s going to be a waste of time, man,” replied Fisher.

“You going to get up there and lie to ‘em?” McCormick asked.

“It’s not the fact of lying, I’m not going to get up there and put myself, my life on the line,” Fisher said.

“So if I asked you if you knew anybody, you’d just say you didn’t know them?” McCormick said.

“I don’t know nobody,” said Fisher.

“OK. Even though that’s not true?” said McCormick.

“I have to,” Fisher said.

Fisher kept his word Wednesday and Thursday, denying any knowledge of a 1982 slaying prosecutors say was carried out by a Bryant Family hit man. He also denied any knowledge about the four defendants, who are on trial for the drug-related killings of four people, including the alleged hit man and a 2-year-old child, in 1988.

In response to McCormick’s questions, Fisher replied, “I don’t recall” or “I don’t know.” When confronted with the tape, he flatly denied ever speaking to McCormick on Wednesday and said the voice on the tape was not his. He maintained that position when defense lawyer Carl E. Jones, who represents Stanley Bryant, tried to cross-examine him.

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Fisher’s resistance to testifying was consistent with the prosecution’s claims that the Bryant Family controlled a multimillion-dollar cocaine empire in the northeast San Fernando Valley through bribery, intimidation and murder.

He was the third witness in a row to claim memory loss or total ignorance, obliging McCormick and his team of prosecutors to call police to the stand to tell the jury about the witnesses’ earlier statements detailing key events. In law-enforcement lingo, the process is known as “greening” the witness after a case, California vs. Green, that allowed prior inconsistent statements to be admitted into evidence.

A convicted felon who is currently awaiting trial in another state, Fisher was among a group of men who bought $600 worth of rock cocaine from a Bryant Family crack house in 1982, then tried to get a refund when they weren’t satisfied with its quality, according to prosecutors.

After they were rebuffed by Jeff Bryant, who is not a defendant in the current trial but who prosecutors say ran the Family’s business, Fisher’s younger brother Winfred and two friends vandalized a van belonging to John Roscoe Bryant, a brother of Jeff and Stanley Bryant.

Stanley Bryant saw them, prosecutors say, and five days later, on May 27, 1982, Ken Gentry, one of the vandals, was shot to death. Prosecutors believe that shortly before Gentry’s killing, G.T. Fisher saw Stanley Bryant drive by the spot where Gentry was working on his car and point him out to a paid hit man named Andre Armstrong.

After Gentry was slain, prosecutors say, Fisher and a couple of his brothers went to the Bryant Family’s billiard hall in Pacoima--a front for their cocaine business--and confronted Stanley Bryant, warning him to stay away from Winfred or face retribution.

Winfred Fisher was killed in 1983, although McCormick said his shooting has not been directly tied to the drug dispute the year before.

Prosecutors say 1982’s events set the stage for a quadruple murder on Aug. 28, 1988, in Lake View Terrace. The victims included hit man Armstrong.

An embittered Armstrong was convicted alone of the Gentry murder and extorted Bryant Family members from prison in exchange for his silence, prosecutors said. After his release in 1988, he hoped to obtain still more money as well as a big piece of the Bryant Family business.

But Armstrong and a drug-dealing partner named James Brown were ambushed in a barrage of gunfire as they arrived at a Bryant Family crack house to pick up some cash, prosecutors said. Waiting in a car outside, Brown’s girlfriend Loretha Anderson and her 28-month-old daughter, Chemise English, were killed as potential witnesses.

Accused of planning and carrying out their slayings are Stanley Bryant, the Family’s alleged second-in-command, and alleged Family employees Donald Smith, Jon Settle and LeRoy Wheeler. All could face the death penalty if convicted.

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Although Fisher denied knowing anything about the 1982 murder on the witness stand, he briefly acknowledged it on the audiotape and talked about growing up with Stanley Bryant, whom he described as a bookworm who seemed too smart to get involved with crime.

“He wasn’t about, you know, the neighborhood, dice game or nothing like that, you know,” Fisher told McCormick. “Like I say, Stan should have been a lawyer.”

Later, the prosecutor asked Fisher whether Stanley Bryant was “smart enough to have done the right thing if he wanted to.”

“Yeah,” Fisher replied. “But some smart people get influenced too, though.”