Roger Clemens perjury trial may have been doomed from the start, according to jurors who heard case
Based on what some of the Roger Clemens jurors are saying, the prosecution’s case against the famous pitcher might have been doomed from the start, however the evidence and testimony played out.
Juror 13, political activist Joyce Robinson-Paul, told the Daily News after the verdict Monday that she and her peers “didn’t see anything to be prosecuted” in the government’s case that Clemens lied to Congress about doping.
The jury was asked to weigh the evidence, of course, not the Justice Department’s priorities in pursuing cases. According to Clemens’ chief defense lawyer, Rusty Hardin, jurors he spoke to after the verdict said they, too, disliked the idea of Congress calling Clemens to testify in the first place.
Hardin told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday that he and other lawyers met with jurors at a Washington sports bar on Monday night and that they “agreed with everything I have been screaming about for four and half years.”
“The government shouldn’t have done it,” Hardin said. “It was totally wrong.”
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven Durham and Dan Butler were assigned the case after Democratic and Republican lawmakers asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clemens lied to a House committee about steroids and human growth hormone. Two more prosecutors, Gilberto Guerrero and Courtney Saleski, were added to the case this year.
But even if the case was flawed, a unique political reality might have forced the government’s hand with Clemens. New York attorney Tom Harvey pointed out Tuesday that the Justice Department could not afford to let Clemens go without a legal fight — not when one of the department’s top-ranked officials, assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, had worked alongside Hardin to represent the pitcher during the congressional appearance that got Clemens indicted.
“Did his underlings feel obligated to approve the prosecution to avoid fingers being pointed at them later on,” asked Harvey.
“Also, what pressure did the prosecutors feel from Congress in terms of getting future funding for Justice programs?”
Breuer was recused from the case, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had worked at the same law firm as Breuer (Covington and Burling) when Clemens was Breuer’s client in 2008.
Breuer declined to comment on the verdict on Monday, but his statements from 2008 live on in the pending defamation complaint government witness Brian McNamee is pursuing against Clemens.
“In the cheapest, most mean-spirited stunt, he has made up a bunch of evidence,” Breuer said of McNamee then, more than four years before the Clemens prosecutors took that evidence - including steroid-laced, blood-stained needles - to trial.
Hardin told the Houston Chronicle that three jurors he met with after the verdict said the medical waste was “worthless.” Hardin did not name the jurors he spoke with, and the court did not release that information.
Roger Clemens perjury trial may have been doomed from the start, according to jurors who heard case
