DEFENSE FOCUSES ON SURVIVOR IN STABBING : LAWYER: MCLOREN `WAS READY TO START SOMETHING'.

Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer

The defense for four youths charged with killing an Agoura Hills teen-ager last year focused in closing arguments Wednesday on the surviving victim in a double stabbing and his marijuana sales from a backyard shack.

Hoping to counter the prosecution's portrayal of the defendants as menacing youths who attacked James P. Farris III and Michael McLoren, attorneys said the four were defending themselves in a fight over marijuana. McLoren survived being stabbed and was the prosecution's primary witness during the trial in Malibu Superior Court.

``These are kids going to, unfortunately, a drug dealer's residence, and all hell breaks loose,'' said James Sussman, attorney for Micah Holland, 16, of Thousand Oaks.

Sussman contended McLoren was angry with his girlfriend for taking marijuana and ``was ready to start something'' when the four defendants confronted him May 22, repeating a defense claim that the stabbing occurred during a fight and not an effort to steal marijuana.

Prosecutors contend the defendants attacked Farris and McLoren as they were lifting weights and using a punching bag outside the wooden fort behind McLoren's home.

Deputy District Attorney Jeff Semow began Wednesday's proceedings by leading jurors through a sequence of events that ended when Farris collapsed and died on McLoren's kitchen floor from a stab wound to the heart.

The four defendants are Holland; his older brother, Jason Holland, 19, of Thousand Oaks; Brandon Hein, 19, of Oak Park, and Tony Miliotti, 18, of Westlake Village. They are charged with murder, attempted murder, burglary and two counts of attempted robbery.

Jason Holland has testified that he stabbed McLoren and Farris, but said he didn't intend to wound them seriously during a fight. He admitted carrying and using a knife, which has never been recovered.

Defense attorneys attacked McLoren's credibility as a witness Wednesday and said Jason Holland was the most truthful witness.

Curtis Leftwich, the attorney for Miliotti, said credibility is ``really what this case is all about.''

The prosecution's case ``really rises and then falls on the credibility of Michael McLoren,'' he said.

California law permitted prosecutors to charge each defendant with the same offenses even if they cannot prove who actually stabbed the victims. Each of the defendants also faces special allegations that he attacked the victims during an attempted robbery.

Sussman told the jury that prosecutors are trying to prove that the attack occurred during an attempted robbery without establishing who was responsible for what.

That argument is linked to instructions that will be read to the jury dealing with the possibility of a verdict for the crime of voluntary manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter, rather than first- or second-degree murder.