Roger Clemens and his attorneys address reporters and fans outside U.S. District Court in Washington following his acquittal on perjury charges. (Photo by @ajperezfox)
Roger Clemens, one of the most statistically accomplished pitchers in baseball history, was found not guilty today on charges of lying to Congress during a notorious 2008 hearing on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball.
Clemens was acquitted in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia of three counts of making false statements, two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice in a retrial of a case that was originally scheduled for last July. A judge threw declared a mistrial just two days into those proceedings after the prosecution presented witnesses with inadmissible evidence.
But the trial that concluded today lasted eight weeks and featured a host of high-profile witnesses including Andy Pettitte, Clemens’ former teammate with the New York Yankees and Houston Astros, who testified for the prosecution that Clemens admitted to using human growth hormone.
Considering the testimony of Pettitte and Clemens’ former trainer Brian McNamee, who said he supplied Clemens with performance enhancing drugs, the dismissal of all charges is a blow to the Justice Department, The New York Times reports:
The verdict, which was rendered by a panel of eight women and four men who are largely uninterested in baseball. It was a major, especially painful, defeat for the government in its second failed attempt at convicting a player whose legal problems highlighted baseball’s continuing drug woes.
Last spring, Clemens’s initial trial ended in a mistrial on only the second day of testimony when prosecutors bungled by showing the jury inadmissible evidence. Critics said the prosecution of an athlete like Clemens — a seven-time Cy Young Award winner — was a waste of government time and money, but the United States attorney’s office in Washington pressed forward anyway.
Federal prosecutors, the Times notes, have been largely unsuccessful in making cases against high-profile athletes accused of steroid use. Barry Bonds, the former San Francisco Giants slugger whose alleged steroid use helped him break just about every home run-related record on the books, was convicted last year of one count of obstructing justice and received 30 days of house arrest. Bonds is appealing the sentence.
In a 24-season career that began with the Boston Red Sox and continued with stints with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees and the Astros, Clemens racked up a record of 354 wins and 184 losses, notched an earned run average of 3.12 and collected 4,672 strikeouts, trailing only Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. Clemens’ seven Cy Young Awards are the most of any pitcher in baseball history. But after an investigation into steroid abuse in Major League Baseball conducted by former Sen. George Mitchell in 2007 named him as a leading user of performance enhancing drugs, Clemens’ accomplishments were thrown into suspicion.
Clemens, who last played in 2007, is coming up for eligibility to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But like other players of his era who have been associated with performance enhancing drugs after racking up eye-popping statistics—Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, to name a few—it is questionable if he will garner enough votes from the baseball writers charged with inducting the sport’s legends into Cooperstown, N.Y.
Outside the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, Clemens addressed a large throng of reporters and fans. “It has been a hard five years,” he said, according to The Washington Post’s Del Quentin Wilber. One fan was heard to yell out, “Way to go rocket!” Clemens responded, reportedly flush with emotion: “I put a lot of hard work into that career.”
