As Jury Deliberates, Henley Ponders His Drug Case

The pizza has been delivered, possibly the last supper for a long while for Ram cornerback Darryl Henley in his own home, and it sits cold.

Closing arguments in his trial on charges of possessing and conspiring to traffic drugs were completed Monday. But as the jury continues its deliberations, Henley is reviewing testimony, pages and pages he can almost recite by memory, searching for one more reason to assure himself of freedom.

“I think I will be exonerated; I think my life can be reconstructed,” Henley says. “But I just can’t drop it. Does being not guilty make it all over?”

Prosecutors charge Henley, 28, one of the Rams’ best defensive players, with operating an illicit drug network from his home in Brea that extended to Memphis and Atlanta. They say Henley used his fame to persuade former Ram cheerleader Tracy Donaho, then 19, to carry suitcases of cocaine across the country during the summer of 1993.

On 10-minute notice to report to U.S. District Court in Santa Ana for the jury’s verdict, he could go to prison for at least the next decade--or he could sign a contract for millions of dollars to play professional football.

“You want to see what I do with my time?” he asks, pulling out a note pad. “I fantasize. I write down what I think my next contract will be. Nice, huh?”

A guilty verdict, however, will place him immediately in handcuffs and subject him to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and up to $4 million in fines.

“I have not thought about it; not once,” he says. “No nightmares. I don’t think it’s going to happen. No way.

“If it does, I will be fooled. I just don’t think that’s in my future.”

During closing arguments this week, a prosecutor told jurors they should not be “dazzled” by the football player’s fame. They pointed out that at least five witnesses from across the country have testified during his two-month trial that Henley was the mastermind of a cross-county drug ring.

Among them were Donaho, who was arrested carrying about 25 pounds of cocaine in a suitcase at an Atlanta airport. She pleaded guilty and testified that Henley, whom she had been dating for several months, paid her $1,000 to carry one suitcase to Memphis and a second to Atlanta.

“I was not guilty of putting Tracy Donaho up to carrying drugs, a suitcase full of drugs, to any state,” Henley said. “Where did I make my mistake? It was in meeting Tracy Donaho.”

Henley’s attorneys have accused Donaho of lying on the stand in trying to win a more lenient sentence.

“I think the government has done everything it can to break my spirit,” Henley said. “I think it became personal: It was high profile, a cheerleader, a professional football player. . . .

“Every day my picture is up there, and they’ve been throwing darts at it. I’m angry a lot; I don’t have much patience. They say my name and I don’t like to hear it. It’s always attached to something sinister.”

Although Henley’s fate is with the jury, he is still home pulling out papers, talking about significant telephone numbers and pleading his case. Two telephones and two more beepers refuse to be quiet.

“Maybe there’s something else, something we forgot,” Henley says. “I’ve studied this. I know this.”

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There is a conflict in dates in Donaho’s testimony, he says, and painstakingly explains it. “I mean look at this, and this. . . .”

Others who have taken the stand against Henley include government witness Alejandro Fegueroa Cuevas, who testified that after Donaho’s arrest in Atlanta, Henley told him he needed more time to pay a $360,000 drug debt, because his “connection had gotten busted.”

Henley has an explanation for everything and says he is tired of having to defend himself.

He ticks off the names of witnesses and says they used his name because he is famous.

“I’m the defendant, and it’s like my lawyer said about something else, it’s like a feather blowing in the wind. People are going to believe what they want unless they go page by page through the testimony, and then it would become painfully obvious what has happened.”

Now there is only waiting.

“You see that switch down on the floor--slide it,” Henley says, and the room goes black. “I’ve had my moments when I just sit in the dark and think about it. I’ve thought about this day--when it’s over.

“It’s been just one day at a time, baby, just one day at a time. My mom’s worn out, and I’m bitter about that, but I would never let the enemy see me cry.”

He says he would have liked to meet with each juror to tell them, “I didn’t do it.”

But at the trial, he passed on his right to testify.

“I wanted to testify,” he said. “But my attorneys advised me not to. They said I was too animated to testify; they said I was too emotional. But that’s the way I am.”

The trial’s culmination will end almost a two-year odyssey for Henley. He missed much of the 1993 season because of the charges, although he received his full $600,000 salary. He returned to the Rams last season for half as much money, and under court restrictions went on to play and earn praise from coaches.

His contract with the Rams has expired. Free to negotiate a new deal with any team, he could draw as much as $8 million over the next five years, according to NFL insiders.

“Going through all this I related it to football,” he says. “But what you underestimate is that it is every day. And even though I knew this was going to be an everyday thing, it was much harder than I thought. You’d have a good day and then you’d be thinking, but what about tomorrow.

“I thought my attorneys did a good job, but I know innocent people can be convicted, and that probably worries me as much as anything. If they say, ‘guilty,’ it’s my mom, it’s my dad. If that happens, I’ll wink at them to let them know I’m all right.

“If it’s not guilty, I’ve thought about jumping up on the table and doing my Ken Norton dollar-D dance and going up to (the federal prosecutors) and saying . . . just all these things I’ve thought about. But when it happens for real, I’ll just thank God for blessing me, walk out of there and go work out.”

Henley said he might write a book.

“God, I’m just relieved it’s over, but I’m not at rest because I don’t know the outcome,” Henley said. “You just never know.”

Times staff writer Susan Marquez Owen contributed to this story.