DENVER -- Willie Clark has been found guilty of killing Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams. A jury of eight women and four men found Clark guilty on all 21 counts, including first-degree murder of Darrent Williams and attempted murder of the 16 other people in the limousine on New Year's 2007, including former Broncos wide receiver Javon Walker.

Clark was expressionless, only glancing toward a weeping woman relative as the verdict was read at 12:10 p.m. All 12 jurors then individually told the judge "yes" when asked if the verdict was each of their own decisions. The jury got the case late Tuesday night, deliberated all day Wednesday and came to a decision late Thursday morning.

Clark will be sentenced April 30th. He will face life in prison without parole.

When the verdict was read, there were at least 14 deputies in the courtroom. Clark was emotionless when he was found guilty. He glanced over at an older woman family member who was crying uncontrollably, covering her face with her hands.

Darrent Williams' mother, Rosalind, sat quietly looking ahead as tears trickled down her cheeks.

"I expect, of course, an appeal in this case," said Judge Christina Habas. She instructed probation officers who will write a pre-sentencing report to not interview Clark at his defense attorney's request.

"Mr. Clark you are remanded (to jail)," said Judge Habas.

Deputies escorted Clark out of the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back. The crying woman relative began sobbing even louder.

Reporters asked Clark's family members outside the courtroom if they wished to comment.

"How 'bout you leave us a alone!" a young woman consoling the weeping older woman said loudly. "Leave us alone!"

"Please, be respectful," said defense attorney Darren Cantor.

Cantor consoled Clark's relatives after the verdict. He patted their shoulders and whispered encouragement.

"Nothing can ever bring Darrent Williams back or ease the suffering for (his mother) Rosalind and her grandchildren," Denver Broncos President and CEO Pat Bowlen said in a statement. "But after three long years, it is very gratifying to see closure brought to this case. This process has been extremely difficult for the Williams family, his friends and teammates, this community, and the entire Denver Broncos organization."

Read the entire Denver Broncos Willie Clark guilty verdict statement.

"This was a quest for justice for a mother that lost a son, for friends that lost a friend, for a team that lost a teammate, and for a community that lost a very good man," District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said at a press conference.

Morrissey lauded his veteran trial prosecutors, Tim Twining and Bruce Levin, Denver police investigators and the Metro Gang Task Force for helping crack the gang code of silence to get fellow gang members and drug-dealers to testify against Clark.

Asked if this case was more challenging that other gang slayings he's prosecuted over 15 years, Twining said it was not.

"The sad truth is in Denver, Colorado, my community, that these are common place," Twining said. "Unfortunately, a young man lost his life, and we see that all the time."

"What was different about this case was the media attention. And I understand that, you know, it's a Bronco town," Twining said. "But (gang killings) happen every week in this town. And most of them go unreported by the media."

Yet, when asked if the trial coverage exposing the senseless tragedy of gang violence – and Clark's likely life imprisonment – could impact gang crime, the prosecutor saw a glimmer of hope.

"I sure hope so," Twining said. "But having done these ... gang cases for over 15 years, I'm guarded in my optimism on that."

"We can only hope that with the good work that the Denver Police Department does every day, we keep going forward with these cases, may be we can stem the tide," Twining added.

Morrissey praised the jury for hard work as they listened to 11 tense days of often horrifying testimony about the slaying and saw grim autopsy photographs of the slain Bronco.

The jurors declined to give interviews.

Before the verdict was returned Thursday, Judge Habas sent jurors a written question asking: "Has any juror sent any text message or e-mail contrary to this Court's consistent and standing order not to communicate with any third party, about the pendency of a verdict or deliberations?"

The jury foreman wrote back: "No one has claimed to have sent any text or e-mail."

The judge's inquiry might have stemmed from concern, by Habas or attorneys, about the source of news media reports that the jury was near a verdict early Thursday.

In their first question to the judge on Wednesday afternoon, the jury asked: "To apply the actual crime of murder in the first-degree, can an individual be found complicit in the act and as a result of being complicit be found to be guilty of murder in the first-degree?"

This referred to the judge's instruction on the criminal "complicity" law, which allowed jurors to find Clark guilty of murder -- even if they couldn't agree he pulled the trigger himself.

Because Clark was accused of driving the SUV used in the drive-by shooting, jurors were told they could find Clark guilty of the murder as a “complicitor,” someone who “aided, abetted, advised, or encouraged the other person in the commission or planning of the crime,” according to Jury Instruction No. 16.

The judge replied that if jurors found prosecutors had proven Clark's complicity in aiding "another person who committed all or part" of either of the two murder counts, "then the defendant may be found guilty of either or both Murder in the First Degree (extreme indifference) or Murder in the First Degree (after deliberation) whichever you find proven."

The jury found Clark guilty on both first-degree murder charges.

During the trial, prosecutors had argued that Clark fired the fatal shots from an SUV that pulled up beside a rented limo carrying Williams and some friends on New Year's Day 2007.

Prosecutors said the drive-by shooting was revenge by Clark who felt "disrespected" after he and fellow gang members clashed with some Broncos players, including Brandon Marshall, and their friends at Club Safari on Broadway.

They portrayed Clark, nicknamed "Little Let Loose," as a hot-head who resented that the football stars were getting all the attention on his turf, including free nightclub entrance and VIP booths, while Clark had to wait in line in the cold.

During the three-week trial, prosecutor Bruce Levin said jurors were taken “into a world that I refer to as the belly of the beast."

"It is a world where (Clark) starts out his New Year’s celebration by putting on a bullet proof vest, walking around with a gun and saying (it’s) … 'Killer night,' '' Levin said, referring to a witness’ account.

"This is the world of Willie Clark … where the exchange of a few words, fueled by a little bit of alcohol (and) … a push or a shove in front of your fellow gang members is … enough for Willie Clark to decide to unload, to let loose on a limousine with 17 innocent people," Levin said.

Prosecutors said they were forced to rely on a rogue’s gallery of at least five witnesses who were granted reduced sentences on drug-trafficking convictions or early release from prison in exchange for testifying against Clark.

“Crimes conceived in hell, seldom have angels for witnesses," Levin said.

But the defense team said Willie Clark was a scapegoat used by fellow gang members and drug-dealers who cut deals to save their own skin.

Defense attorney Abraham Hutt used a chart to show that the prosecution witnesses were "bought and paid for," granted prison sentence reductions totaling 188 years.

"A 188 years of life freedom given to these people to say: 'Willie Clark did it,'" Hutt said.

Some witnesses were also placed in the federal witness protection program, which paid -- or will pay -- to relocate them and their family members and provide them with new identities

However, prosecutors cobbled together what they called a "mountain" of circumstantial evidence.

Prosecutors said a crucial break was when Broncos defense star Elvis Dumervil secretly recorded a phone conversation with a woman who told him that Clark asked her boyfriend outside Safari for a "burner" -- or gun -- just before the shooting. When the boyfriend said he didn't have a gun, according to the woman's recording, Clark said that was OK, he had one in his SUV.

Prosecutors also played the recording of phone call in which Clark tells jailed gang leader Brian Hicks, owner of the white Tahoe, that he was driving the SUV during a "blind-side hit." That's slang for a surprise drive-by shooting, according to a gang investigator and a gang witness.

According to testimony, Hicks told Clark to make sure he removed identifying license plates from the Tahoe. The once-white SUV was later found abandoned in northeast Denver, spray-painted black, its interior burned -- but with the identifying plates still on.

Another gang member and long-time friend of Clark, Vernon Edwards, testified that the defendant always carried a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun. But days after the killing, Clark asked Edwards to get him a new "twin" of the old gun, saying he had to break it up and discard it, Edwards testified.

Police firearms experts testified that the .40-caliber bullet that killed Williams was fired from a gun barrel ditched in a field near Clark’s home near where the abandon Tahoe was found.

Prosecutors also provided three witnesses, all former or current suspected gang members or prison mates of Clark, who said he confessed to killing Williams.

Trial 'Saturated With Witness Intimidation'

The alleged gang-slaying trial was "saturated with witness intimidation" and fear, as Judge Habas stressed twice.

Several witnesses told police they feared their families could be killed if they testified against Clark, a suspected member of an east Denver Crips gang. In an unrelated case, Clark and two other gang members face trial later this year for the 2006 murder of a woman. She was a witness in another murder trial and killed days before she was to testify that a gang member tried to kill her outside a nightclub a year earlier.

Even Clark said he wanted to testify -- but wouldn't, because the Denver County Sheriff's Office picked up a street rumor last year that gang members vowed to "make him Swiss cheese" if he took the stand.

Security outside the fourth-floor courtroom was intense, with deputies lining a hallway that was cleared when Clark was escorted to-and-from court. People entering the courtroom had to go through metal-detector screening twice.

Judge Habas, who has presided over several major gang trials, has been escorted outside the courtroom by armed body guards, including deputies with machine guns in SWAT gear.

Two witnesses received protection by U.S. marshals, and some witnesses and their families have participated in the federal witness protection program.

One witness to an alleged Clark confession initially chose to go to jail instead of testifying, saying his mother had been threatened and his home was recently burglarized and a copy of his grand jury testimony was stolen.

The witness, a former gang member, wanted the judge to bar the news media from reporting his name, but he ultimately agreed to testify. The media agreed to only identify him by his first name, Julian, until the trial was over.

Two suspected gang members, "Markie" Jackson-Keeling and Mario Anderson, who a witness placed in the white Tahoe during the shooting, refused to testify and were jailed for two weeks for contempt of court. They were released when the testimony phase ended, but could face later prosecution for contempt.

Prosecutor Hopeful Case Will 'Stem The Tide' Of Gang Slayings

Asked if this case was more challenging than other gang slayings he's prosecuted over 15 years, Chief Deputy District Attorney Tim Twining said, sadly, it was not.

"With all due respect to the victims in this case," he said this gang killer was similar to the many others that don't get as much attention.

"The sad truth is in Denver, Colorado, my community, is that these are common place," Twining said. "Unfortunately, a young man lost his life, and we see that all the time."

"What was different about this case was the media attention. And I understand that, you know, it's a Bronco town," Twining said. "But (gang killings) happen every week in this town. And most of them go unreported by the media."

Yet, when asked if the trial coverage exposing the senseless tragedy of gang violence -- and Clark's conviction -- could impact life on the street, the prosecutor held out a glimmer of hope.

"I sure hope so," Twining said. "But having done these … gang cases for over 15 years, I'm guarded in my optimism on that."

"I hope so. This got a lot of attention and hopefully everybody in Denver had heard about this and what the result is," he said.

"So we can only hope that with the good work that the Denver Police Department does every day, we keep going forward with these cases, maybe we can stem the tide," Twining added.