Henley Gets Stiff Prison Sentence

Darryl Henley, who once starred for the Los Angeles Rams, was sentenced Monday to more than 41 years in prison.

In consecutive hearings in U.S. District Court, Henley, 30, was ordered to prison for conspiring to run a nationwide cocaine trafficking ring and for then plotting to kill the judge who had presided over the case.

The former UCLA All-American will remain behind bars at least until he’s 65, after serving 35 years--most likely at one of the toughest prisons in America, the maximum-security U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Ill.

“You screwed up your life, didn’t you?” U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real asked Henley before imposing sentence.

Henley did not respond but defense attorney William J. Kopeny nudged him toward the microphone.

“Yes,” Henley said softly.

A few minutes later, in a different courtroom, Judge James M. Ideman urged prison officials to put Henley--whom he called “a hardened criminal”--in the maximum-security facility in downstate Illinois, where most inmates are locked up for 23 hours a day.

Real sentenced Henley to 260 months in the drug case and Ideman added on 235 months in the murder-for-hire plot.

Referring to the botched plot to kill Santa Ana-based U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor, which was hatched while Henley was in a Los Angeles jail awaiting sentencing in the cocaine case, Ideman said, “It’s obvious he’s even more dangerous in custody than out of custody.”

Henley attended Damien High in LaVerne and then UCLA. The Rams took him in the second round of the 1989 draft and he became the starting right cornerback in 1991.

In 1993, he was accused by federal prosecutors of operating a drug network from his home in Brea that extended to Memphis and Atlanta. Prosecutors said Henley persuaded former Ram cheerleader Tracy Donaho, then 19, to carry suitcases of cocaine across the country during the summer of 1993.

In March, 1995, Henley and four defendants, among them his uncle, were convicted by a jury of drug conspiracy and possession charges.

Donaho pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport cocaine and testified for the government against Henley. She ultimately was sentenced to 14 months in a halfway house.

Meanwhile, as Henley was in a downtown Los Angeles jail awaiting sentencing, authorities learned he had ordered the killing of Taylor, who had presided over the trial, and of Donaho.

Prosecutors also alleged that he arranged million-dollar drug deals from his jail cell, that he used cellular phones smuggled to him by a jail guard and that the deals were struck with federal agents posing as criminals.

Last Oct. 16, as part of a plea bargain, Henley admitted conspiring to murder Taylor and Donaho and bribing a guard to smuggle him a cellular phone.