DENVER -- 5 PM

A once reluctant witness is expected to testify as early as Monday that Willie Clark admitted killing Darrent Williams, a prosecutor said Friday afternoon.

"I anticipate that (the witness) will tell this jury, if he testifies truthfully and consistently with prior statements, that 'the defendant confessed to me,' " prosecutor Tim Twining told the judge after jury had left for the weekend.

This would be the third witness to testify that Clark admitted killing Williams.

Admitted gang member Vernon Edwards testified Thursday that Clark said he killed Williams because the Broncos player pulled a gun on him. Joshua Grantham, a former prison cell-mate of the defendant, testified Wednesday that Clark told him he put Williams "to sleep" because the cornerback and his friends "disrespected" the gang members at a Denver nightclub.

The reluctant witness, a former gang member, was jailed Wednesday by Judge Christina Habas after he refused to testify unless the news media was barred from using his name.

The man said he feared for the safety of his family if he testified in the murder case and he had face threats against his mother and the burglary of his home where someone stolen a copy of his grand jury testimony. The judge refused to withhold his name because it had already been mentioned twice in open court and it was on a public witness list.

After three days in jail, the witness had a change of heart Friday and told the judge he would testify. The news media voluntarily agreed to only identify the witness by his first name, Julian, during the trial. His full name can be used afterward.

The timing of Julian's decision raised a problem, the judge said, because the prosecution had rested its cased Thursday. Habas said it would be unfair to interrupt the flow of the defense case now that Julian had changed his mind.

Defense attorney Darren Cantor said Julian was not a valid prosecution rebuttal witness to be put on the stand after the defense rests its case Monday.

Twining disagreed, citing the witnesses the defense put on Friday who testified that Clark was downtown when the shooting occurred and that someone else might have killed Williams.

“(Julian) is clearly rebuttal evidence,” prosecutor Tim Twining said.

“What (the defense) put on so far today ... is alibi and an alternative suspect,” Twining added.

"There’s no more direct rebuttal of an alibi than the defendant saying, "I did it.' "

The judge agreed and ordered Julian to be at court 1 p.m. Monday ready to testify when called. Habas also ordered the man released from jail because he’s reversed his contempt violation by agreeing to testify.

Meanwhile, a smiling Clark told the judge he still hasn’t decided whether or not he wants to testify in his own defense.

The judge has been urging Clark to make up his mind after asking him to start pondering a week ago whether chooses to testify.

"I really want to see how the rest of our witnesses go," Clark said, before he decides to testify or not.

A new reluctant witness surprised the judge Friday.

Marquise Harris intercepted a photocopied letter in which police said Clark wrote that he killed Williams. Harris said he found the letter hidden in a federal prison library in Littleton where Clark and he were incarcerated in late 2007. Harris gave the allegedly incriminating letter to a Rocky Mountain News reporter who broke the story in 2008.

Because the letter is a photocopy -- not an original -- the defense has argued it has signs that someone got samples of Clark's handwriting and cut-and-pasted a bogus confession.

The judge provided Harris with an attorney and he’s supposed to weigh his decision about whether to testify over the weekend.

Two other men, accused gang associates of Clark who a witness placed in the suspect SUV during the shooting, are in jail for refusing to testify.

3 PM

A fire-arms expert said it would be difficult -- "if not impossible" -- for Willie Clark to drive a SUV while firing .45 caliber handgun shots out a passenger window that hit the lower side of Darrent Williams’ limousine.

“It would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible to do from the driver’s seat,” said Richard Post, a defense team firearms expert.

Key prosecution witness Daniel “Ponytail” Harris testified earlier that he was a backseat passenger in a white Chevy Tahoe driven by Clark who leaned over the passenger seat while driving and fired the shots that killed Williams.

Even homicide Lt. Jon Priest testified that it would be "nearly impossible" for someone driving the SUV to fire those steeply angled .45 caliber shots.

But the .45 caliber shots may be irrelevant to determining who killed Williams.

A police firearms expert testified that it was a .40-caliber handgun – not the .45 gun – that killed Williams. Police have been unable to identify who fired the second, .45 caliber handgun.

Lt. Priest testified that the .40-caliber bullets struck at a level angle higher up at the rear side of the limo. That's where Williams was sitting when the fatal bullet pierced his throat.

The implication is that the higher, level .40-caliber shots might be possible for someone to fire from the SUV driver’s seat.

But neither police, nor the defense firearms expert directly stated that the SUV driver could have made the .40 caliber shots.

Vernon Edwards, a self-described gang associate of Clark, testified earlier this week that the defendant always carried a .40-caliber Taurus semiautomatic handgun.

Edwards said Clark asked him to get him a new “twin” gun right after the shooting. Edwards testified that Clark said he had to break up and discard his old .40-caliber gun.

Police later recovered a .40-caliber gun barrel in an Aurora field near Clark’s home. Test-firing confirmed the barrel came from the gun that fired the bullet that killed Williams, according to police firearms experts.

Daniel Harris testified that gang member "Markie" Jackson-Keeling was leaning back in the front passenger as Clark blasted away with the gun near his face.

Defense attorney Abraham Hutt asked Post, the defense firearms expert, if someone blasting a handgun about a foot from the front-seat passenger's face would have injured his face and hearing.

“The injuries could be numerous -- burns, lacerations," said Post, referring to hot gases and burning propellant expelled through a gun's muzzle. The passenger might also suffer permanent hearing damage from the loud gunfire in a confined space.

Witnesses who saw Jackson-Keeling right after the shooting did notice him having such injuries.

But prosecutor Bruce Levin, stressing that Post didn't know how far the passenger was from the gun muzzle or if he turned his face away, said it would be "pure speculation to say if you would find burns" on the passenger's face.

1:54 PM

A friend gave Willie Clark a potential alibi Friday, saying she saw him driving a black SUV at a downtown after-hours club soon after the shooting of Darrent Williams.

This would contradict prosecution witnesses’ accounts that Clark was driving a white Chevrolet Tahoe when he allegedly fired the shots at a white Hummer limousine that killed Darrent Williams at Speer Boulevard and 11th Avenue soon after 2 a.m. New Year’s Day 2007. The friend, Jazelle Hudson, said she knows it was right after the shooting, because she just had driven past Williams’ Hummer limo on Speer and saw a police car next to it. She thought police had just pulled it over for a traffic violation.

Hudson said she and Clark had just left the Safari Club in separate vehicles. She recounted there had been a disturbance outside Safari, where police said Clark and fellow gang members had clashed with Broncos players and their friends.

Hudson said she and her friend Tanisha Lintz walked with Clark into the same after-hours club at 18th Street and Glenarm Place, which is just over 1 mile from the shooting scene.

Even though Hudson admitted she was “real drunk” that night, she said she remembered Clark was at the after-hours club, because she kidded him about driving a black SUV that was possibly a Ranger Rover or a Land Rover.

“Because I was messing with him,” she said. “I was telling him that he had a nice strut (car) and he should let me borrow it,” she said.

Hudson said when she and Lintz left the Glenarm club, Clark was sitting in the black SUV in the parking lot.

But, under cross-examination by prosecutor Tim Twining, got Hudson to repeat her account that she, Lintz and Clark entered the Glenarm club together.

“Would it change your memory of events if Tanisha (Lintz) said if didn’t happen?” Twining asked.

The defense successfully objected to the question.

But it’s likely that prosecutor will call Lintz to refute Hudson’s account that she saw Clark at the club.

Hudson acknowledged it took until May 2007 to give police her account of that night, even though detectives had been asking her to give an interview since January.

“So, you waited five months to come down” to talk with police? Twining asked.

“I have a life,” she said.

Then the prosecutor said Hudson told police she didn’t get to she get to the after-hours club until nearly 3 a.m.

“I’m just guessing what time it was,” said Hudson, adding she never wears a watch.

But defense attorney Darren Cantor pointed out that Hudson gave police a range of possible times for when she reached the Glenarm club, from 2 a.m. to 2:45 a.m., according to a police report.

Twining also had Hudson confirm that she had two felony drug convictions. The jury can use prior felony convictions to weigh a witness’ credibility.

Under prosecution questioning, Hudson acknowledged she cared for Clark, who is like a cousin to her. The implication was that Hudson might testify favorably for the man she calls “cousin.”

Defense attorney Cantor took on her credibility head-on.

“Ms. Hudson, would you come here, take the oath and lie for Willie Clark?” Cantor asked.

“No,” Hudson replied.

11:59 AM

Willie Clark’s attorneys began their defense of the murder defendant Friday morning by calling witnesses who said they saw a dark green SUV follow the white Hummer limousine carrying Broncos player Darrent Williams as it left a Denver nightclub minutes before the deadly shooting early New Year’s Day 2007.

One witness reported hearing what he thought were fire crackers exploding, then seeing a brown or light green SUV speeding north on Speer from the shooting scene.

All prosecutions witnesses have testified the suspect SUV was a white Chevrolet Tahoe. Several witnesses said Clark was driving the white Tahoe during the shooting.

Key prosecution witness Daniel “Ponytail” Harris said he saw Clark fire the deadly shots at Williams limo from the Tahoe.

The Tahoe was later found disguised with black paint, its interior burned in northeast Denver, 10 blocks from Clark's home, witnesses and police investigators testified.

The first defense witness was a security guard who responded to a clash outside the Safari nightclub just before Williams was killed in the drive-by shooting. The altercation was between members of the Denver Broncos and their friends and a group of accused gang members that included Clark, according to earlier witnesses.

Malia Calip, a Club Vinyl security guard, said she and her boss responded to a disturbance that night across the street outside the Safari Club on Broadway Street.

It was a chaotic scene with several men and a few women yelling at each other, Calip said.

To break up a verbal clash between two women, Calip said she “pepper foamed” the women and a light-skinned Arab-looking man near them.

Calip said she kept an eye on the light-skinned man she pepper sprayed, because he appeared to be a troublemaker and was shoving people as he pushed his way through the after-hours crowd. She pointed out the man in a still image from a security video of the closing-time crowd outside of Safari that night.

Calip said the man was about her height, 5 feet 4 inches tall, and she watched him walk across the street and enter front passenger door of a green Ford Explorer SUV.

Earlier in the trial, key prosecution witness Daniel “Ponytail” Harris acknowledged that he was shown on the security video shoving through the crowd.

Harris was granted immunity from prosecution in the slaying in exchange for his testimony against Clark.

Defense attorneys have strived to show that Harris might have been the shooter in the killing. Police have said at least two guns were used in the drive-by shooting.

Earlier this week, a defense attorney criticized police for failing to identify an anonymous woman who called the Crime-Stoppers tip-line five times in 2007 to report that Harris admitted to her in Mexico that he was shooter. Harris testified that he was hiding out in the Playa Del Carmen resort town in Mexico after the slaying because he feared Clark would kill him because he witnesses the crime.

Yet, while Calip’s said the light-skinned man was 5 feet 4 inches tall, Harris is more than 6 feet tall.

Calip’s security firm boss, Darryl Honor testified that after the Safari fight ended, he saw Williams’ limo drove south on Broadway Street and turned right on 10th Avenue.

About a minute later Honor said he saw green SUV follow the limo’s path, but it might have turned into a gas station, instead of following the SUV onto 10th Avenue. It’s believed to be the same green SUV that Calip saw the short, light-skinned man enter.

Both Honor and Calip recalled a security guard radioing the license plate of the green SUV. But the radio recording of the transmission was recorded over, erasing the plate number that was called in.

In a recent interview, Honor said he had a “slight recollection” that the green SUV whose license plate was radioed in might have be linked to an “individual (who) possibly had a gun,” district attorney investigator Robert Fuller testified.

However, on the stand, Honor said he had trouble remembering any tie between the SUV and gun.

Next came a Summit County probation officer who was exercising his dogs on a deck atop his high-rise apartment building about 2:15 a.m. that New Year’s Day just north of the shooting scene at Speer and 11th Avenue.

After hearing the rapid explosions of what he thought was fireworks, Jason Johnson said he looked over the edge of the deck and saws a brown or light green SUV speeding north on Speer.

Johnson said he never saw the white Hummer limo carrying Williams and his party.

If Johnson was looking north at the speeding SUV, the limo would have been to the south where it veered onto a grassy area after the shooting.

But under questioning by prosecutor Tim Twining, Johnson acknowledged that he wasn’t sure about the SUV’s color.

He confirmed his account in a police report saying that the SUV was two-toned and it might have been brown -- his best memory -- or “soft green.”

Brown, Johnson said, “was the best color I could come up with” for the SUV. “That’s the best I could do.”

9:45 a.m.

Before the trial session began Friday, Judge Christina Habas announced that she had excused a male juror Thursday afternoon.

The judge didn’t explain why the juror was dismissed and asked other jurors to no speculate on why he was.

However, she reassured jurors, “He is fine. He is healthy.”

She asked jurors not to speculate on why the juror was dismissed and reminded everyone to turn off their cell phones in the court.