As video played in the silent courtroom, Byron Lane watched as a slightly younger version of himself confidently discussed murdering someone for cash.
“I do this (expletive) for fun anyway,” Lane said in the video. “But I need (to be) compensated.”
Lane, of Broadview, was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison after his plan to become a hit man for hire backfired. The man sitting with Lane in the parked car was an undercover officer.
Lane, 26, admitted he had three cellphone conversations with the undercover officer in August 2010. The undercover officer wanted Lane to murder a supposed rival gang member in exchange for cash. Lane also admitted he met with the officer in the car.
“The video shows the defendant is someone who is willing to take $1,200 for murdering someone,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Erika Csicsila told U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.
The undercover officer initially met with Lane to buy guns for him, said Lane’s attorney, MiAngel Cody. But the sting later evolved into a murder-for-hire plot, initiated by the undercover officer.
The government, in the original charges, said officers received information that Lane was willing to “commit murders for hire.”
In the video clips recorded in the undercover officer’s car, Lane, an alleged Gangster Disciples enforcer, brags that he’s “dropped two bodies” already.
“The defendant (had) every intention of getting the job done,” Csicsila said.
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But Lane in a rambling statement told the judge that’s not the case. He said he didn’t plan to follow through with the murder.
Instead, he said he just wanted the money so he could move out of his parent’s basement. At the time of the undercover sting, Lane worked as a Broadview public works employee and was about to get kicked out of his parent’s house.
“That wasn’t me on the video,” he said. “It was just bait.”
Lane, who has been convicted of a 2006 armed robbery, comes from a middle-class family. Both parents work in the mental health field. He has an eighth-grade education, he and his attorney told the judge.
No relatives were in court, and his family declined to comment when reached by phone.
The judge told Lane he’s fortunate the murder plot wasn’t real. “You might be in a lot more serious trouble if this had not been a ruse.”