DENVER -- The trial of a man accused of killing Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams entered its seventh day Wednesday with the dramatic testimony from a jail inmate and an order from the judge for the media not to publicize a witness' name.

Accused gang member and murder defendant Willie D. Clark on trial for allegedly firing a gun into the limousine carrying Williams early New Year’s Day 2007. The shooting followed an altercation involving other Denver Broncos in and outside the Safari Club on Broadway.

Clark faces charges of first-degree murder, 16 counts of attempted murder and other charges.

5:20 P.M.

The judge decided not to jail a witness for contempt after the man said he didn't want to testify because there was too much risk to his mother and children.

Instead, the judge told the mystery witness to sleep on his refusal to testify and come back to court at 8:45 a.m. Thursday. The witness' attorney, David Kaplan, had asked the judge to give the man a night to discuss it with his family.

The witness said he would only testify if he wasn't identified by name. Chris Beall, an attorney for the news media, tried to broker a deal where the media would only use his first name during the trial but could use his full name after trial. Beall said news outlets agreed not to have an artist sketch the witness. The man reportedly is a former, longtime gang member.

The man rejected the deal.

The man said he feared for his family if he testified. He said his mother was threatened a couple months ago, and his home was burglarized two weeks ago. In that burglary, a copy of his grand jury testimony was stolen.

4:30 P.M.

"(Clark) thought he was the s--t and he couldn’t be touched," Joshua Grantham said, recounting a conversation with Clark in June 2007, when the men were incarcerated at Cheyenne Mountain Correctional Facility.

Clark allegedly said his gang was "notorious and he’s basically a street kingpin and that he couldn’t be touched by anything, because his crew would take care of anything no matter what," Grantham testified. "No one would tell on him."

Grantham testified that Clark, who police call a gang member, believed Williams and his friends visiting from Fort Worth, Texas, were members of a rival gang.

"Darrent Williams’ crew and his boys and stuff were … basically disrespecting them," said Grantham quoting Clark.

Grantham said the clash started inside the nightclub when someone in Willams' party sprayed the gang members with champagne.

Clark was angry that the Broncos and their friends had "disrespected" them on their own turf.

"This was Denver and this is where they’re from," Grantham recounted.

"(Clark) said that it got physical" when the dispute "got to the street," the witness said.

Outside, other witnesses have testified, Clark and other alleged gang members started exchanging taunts, shoves and punches with the Broncos’ groups.

"After things got out of control, him and his crew was like, 'Hey, we got to get to the whip, because if we let them get to the suburbs we’ll get caught up. There’s more police," Clark said, according to Grantham. He added that "whip" is slang for a vehicle.

Clark allegedly called Williams an "easy mark," Grantham said, because the gang member saw the Broncos player’s party arrive in a white Hummer stretch-limo that was parked in front of the club. Clark said he was driving a faster car.

"(Clark) knew exactly what (limo) they pulled up in that night and he knew that basically they couldn’t outrun him," Grantham said.

Clark said he was driving the "the perfect ride," Grantham said. "It was ride that wasn’t his. It didn’t have his name on it. The tags couldn’t be matched to his name. He said it was his boy 'Solo’s.'"

Two other witnesses have testified that Clark was driving a white Chevy Tahoe belonging to fellow gang member, Brian "Solo" Hicks.

Grantham said Clark was generally reserved at the prison but opened up in his low-security dormitory where about a dozen inmates bunked. The witnesses said Clark discussed the slaying on about four occasions.

"In our room, he opened up a lot. So, he was a little more boastful," Grantham said.

Clark collected newspaper stories about the Broncos player’s murder, and he would always press Grantham to give him copies of his newspaper, the witness said.

"Willie would always be like, 'Hey, let me get that article,'" Grantham testified.

2:45 P.M.

A former prison inmate said Willie Clark crudely boasted that he put Darrent Williams “to sleep.”

Joshua Grantham, a onetime suburban Denver college football scholarship player, said Clark made the comment when they were housed at the Cheyenne Mountain Correctional Facility after the 2007 Williams slaying. Grantham said he was serving a 15-year sentence for aggravated robbery.

Grantham said he was flipping through a magazine previewing the NFL season one day and just happened to have the page opened to a Denver Broncos team photo.

“Willie Clark came up to me and he pointed at the (team) picture and he was like: ‘That’s still my squad, ’” Grantham testified.

The magazine he was holding had a tribute about the late Williams.

Clark pointed to the Williams tribute and said he: “Put that bi*** to sleep,” Grantham said.

Clark also pointed to a photo of Javon Walker, a former Broncos receiver who was with Williams at the Safari Club when Clark and other gang members clashed with the Broncos players inside and outside the club, according to prosecutors.

Walker was riding in a Hummer stretch-limousine strafed with gunfire in a drive-by shooting after they left the club and cradled Williams in his arms as he bled to death.

“I can’t stand that bi*** there. I wish I wudda got him,” Grantham quoted Clark saying in reference to Walker.

11:23 A.M.

Denver homicide Detective Michael Martinez testified Thursday about a jail inmate, who leaked to the Rocky Mountain News in 2008 a photo copy of a letter he intercepted in jail. Prosecutors say the letter was allegedly written by Willie Clark claiming responsibility for the killing of Darrent Williams.

Martinez said the man who leaked the letter initially attempted to sell it to the news media and the Denver Broncos and later sought a $100,000 reward that the Broncos organization offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.

Jurors were shown a photocopied letter Thursday that prosecutors allege was written by Willie D. Clark in jail and states he was worried someone saw him shoot “D-Will” -- a nickname for slain Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams.

The letter writer appears to be anxious that the witness could start talking to police about the killing. It refers to "Rican," a nickname for Daniel Harris, who testified this week that he was riding in a Chevy Tahoe from which Clark fired the fatal shots.

"(The person) seen me with the gun and shoot out the whip," the letter states. "Whip" is slang for a car.

"I’m alone and abandoned because Rican might say something stupid, talk to law enforcements (sic) about the death of D-Will," the letter writer worries. Denver homicide Detective Michael Martinez testified that "Rican" is key witness Harris' nickname.

The letter is signed : “Willie D. Clark,” and also bears the nickname “Boss Money,” which Clark has tattooed on his back, according to photographs shown the jury Wednesday.

Prosecutors and Harris alleged that Clark fired the deadly shots from the white Tahoe that struck a Hummer stretch-limousine carrying Williams and his friends just minutes after they left a Denver nightclub early on New Year’s Day 2007.

Denver homicide Detective Michael Martinez said Clark confirmed that the photocopied letter contained his handwriting.

But defense attorneys contend the document appears to have been cut-and-pasted together from the defendant’s writing samples by someone trying to make it appear he admitted killing Williams.

The letter was provided to the Rocky Mountain News by a man who said he intercepted it in November 2007 while he was held with Clark at the Federal Detention Center in Littleton.

At the time, Clark hadn’t been charged in the killing. He was arrested on a parole violation four days after the slaying.

Martinez said police had trouble getting Clark to provide writing samples because he wanted to write them in the jail cell he shared with another inmate. The detective said he refused that arrangement, because police had to witness Clark writing the samples to authenticate he wrote them.

In May 2008, the Rocky reported that it hired an independent handwriting expert who confirmed that the writing in the letter implicating Clark matched letters Clark previously sent to the newspaper and a letter he sent to U.S. District Judge Wiley Y. Daniel.

10:59 A.M.

Denver District Court Judge Christina Habas ordered the news media not to publicize the name of an upcoming witness who fears for his safety and whose home was burglarized last week.

Prosecutor Tim Twining told the judge that the so-far-unidentified witness had asked that his name not be used and that he not be sketched by an artist in the courtroom.

Judge Habas said she was reluctant to ask the media not to report the name. “Because the media has been so respectful of my orders, time and time again,” the judge said referring to media restrictions in the high security murder trial.

Defense attorney Darren Cantor objected, telling the judge that another witness, Daniel Harris, had his name used and he is under the federal witness protection program.

Habas said she was asking the news media in the courtroom and in the adjacent city council chambers “to not publish this person’s name”.

During a burglary last week of the male mystery witness' home, a copy of his grand jury testimony in the murder case was stolen, authorities said.

The man legitimately had the copy of the grand jury testimony, a district attorney official said, possibly to help him prepare for his trial testimony.

There was speculation that the witness could be a jailhouse inmate who leaked a letter to the Rocky Mountain News that was allegedly written by Willie Clark. In the letter, Clark admitted to the shooting.

8:40 a.m.

Two men who have refused to testify about whether they were in the white Tahoe during the drive-by shooting that killed Darrent Williams could be ordered to take the stand Thursday morning.

Judge Habas last week ordered the two men, Kataina “Markie” Jackson-Keeling and Mario Anderson, jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify.

Prosecutors and witnesses have described Jackson-Keeling, Anderson and murder defendant Willie D. Clark as members of an east Denver street gang. Jackson-Keeling and Anderson were indicted earlier for perjury before the Denver grand jury investigating the Williams slaying.

During a pretrial discussion Wednesday morning between Judge Habas and attorneys, Chief Deputy District Attorney Tim Twining offered three options for informing the jury of the two witnesses’ refusal to testify.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors could agree to a legal stipulation -- or statement of fact -- that would be read to the jury, Twining said. Or the judge could verbally instruct the jury on the pair’s refusal to testify.

Twining’s third, and most dramatic, option: put Jackson-Keeling and Anderson on the stand, forcing them to either refuse to testify or answer the questions.

The judge agreed to Twining’s request to consider the options over night and have the two men in the court room at 8:30 a.m. Thursday -- a half-hour before the daily start of trial testimony.