Accused hitman pleads guilty to killing witness

With a jury selected and ready to begin trial, accused contract killer Laquaille Bryant this morning pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2008 shooting deaths of a federally protected witness and her friend.

Instead, Bryant, 28, decided to leave to the jury the question of whether he is executed by lethal injection or sentenced to life in prison without parole in the Jan. 19, 2008, shootings of Chante Wright, 23, who was in the witness-protection program, and Octavia Green, also 23.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart brought in the jury at noon, which then saw Bryant formally enter guilty pleas to two counts of first-degree murder, two firearms counts and witness intimidation.

Minehart told the jurors that prosecutors will begin presenting evidence this afternoon in the penalty phase of Bryant's trial.

Prosecution and defense attorneys spent Monday and Tuesday at Philadelphia's Criminal Justice Center picking a 12-member jury and several alternates for a trial that was expected to last several weeks.

Bryant's decision was the same as one made last year by John Lewis in the 2007 killing of city police Officer Chuck Cassidy.

Lewis was sentenced to death and his case is now being appealed.

Wright was to have been a key witness in the murder trial of South Philadelphia drug gang leader Hakeem Bey.

Although put into witness protection and relocated to Jacksonville, Fla., Wright decided to return to Philadelphia to visit her seriously ill grandmother. She was in the city for just seven hours before she and Green were killed in a car parked in South Philadelphia.

Homicide detectives recovered Wright's and Green's cell phones from the rental car in which they were shot to death by someone in the backseat.

Tracking the victims' cell phones for common numbers, investigators found a flurry of calls before and after the killings involving Bryant, a Bey associate named Malik Bennett, and Bey, then in prison in Philadelphia.

After police identified one of Bryant's fingerprints on the rear door of the death car, detectives continued following the cell phone trail until it led to a Kensington house that Bryant shared with his wife and arrested him.

Bey, 28, is serving a life term for first-degree murder in the 2000 ambush shooting of Moses Williams.

According to testimony from Bey's 2008 trial in Philadelphia, Williams, a member of a rival South Philly street gang, was targeted because he disrespected Bey's brother.

Wright, in the car with Williams when he was shot, identified Bey as the gunman. She was accepted into witness protection after she recanted her testimony once and told police Bey threatened to kill her.

Two other witnesses to the Williams shooting were murdered and others refused to testify out of what prosecutors said was fear of retaliation.

Bey has not been charged in Wright's murder.