A judge heard evidence today on motions to suppress evidence collected by authorities against a man charged in the fatal shooting of Denver Bronco Darrent Williams.
Willie Clark, 26, is accused of killing Williams on New Year’s Day 2007. On Friday, District Judge Christina Habas also continued the trial set for July to Oct. 13 at the request of Clark’s defense attorneys.
His lawyers sought to exclude evidence that included cellular phone records, a jailhouse wiretap and incriminating statements made to a detective.
Habas said she would work to issue written rulings some time next week.
Clark allegedly admitted to Det. Mike Martinez that he was the author of a letter that implicated him in Williams’ murder.
A man who was in the federal holding facility with Clark intercepted a letter he allegedly wrote and provided it to authorities after initially bringing it to the Rocky Mountain News in May, 2008.
In the letter, Clark writes of his worry that a witness saw him shoot from the SUV, a Chevrolet Tahoe.
The witness “seen me with the gun and shoot out the whip,” he wrote, using slang for a car, according to the newspaper’s account.
While speaking through a small opening in Clark’s cell Martinez claims Clark told him he would not leave his cell to provide the writing sample because he already had, Martinez testified.
“It was already proven he had written the letter and he wasn’t denying it,” Martinez said Clark told him.
Defense attorneys filed a motion asking Habas to exclude the evidence because Clark had twice indicated to federal prison guards that he would not leave his cell to meet with Denver detectives and had previously declined to speak to detectives through his attorney.
“This is a set up,” said Abe Hutt, one of Clark’s attorneys. “The purpose is to have a response.”
But prosecutors said Martinez only wished to have Clark give the writing sample and had no intention of questioning Clark.
“I don’t believe it was interrogation in any sense of the word,” prosecutor Bruce Levin said.
Clark is also charged in a separate case with killing Kalonniann Clark in December 2006. She was shot to death in her apartment just before she was to testify that fellow gang member Brian Kenneth Hicks shot at her outside a Denver nightclub in 2005.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
