United States vs. William R. Clemens Begins Today

Jury selection in the case of United States vs. William R. Clemens begins today in Washington, DC. Opening statements are expected early next week.

Fat Billy is charged with six felony counts (Obstruction of Congress, Perjury, False Statements) for telling (under oath) a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February 2008 that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career.

Jim Litke, Associated Press:

After being implicated in MLB's Mitchell Report, Clemens could have denied using performance-enhancers in a forum of his own choosing and quietly slipped into retirement while the debated raged on ...

Instead, Clemens begged Congress to make a federal case out of it. ...

"Somebody is trying to break my spirit in this room," Clemens said during testimony that February day three years ago, refusing to so much as glance at Brian McNamee, his former trainer and principal accuser. "And they're not going to break my spirit." ...

McNamee's version of their decade together has already made a sizable dent in his former employer's wallet, mostly to cover lawyer Rusty Hardin's legal fees, which could charitably be described as throwing good money after bad.

Under Hardin's counsel, Clemens played a secretly recorded phone conversation for reporters in which he came off sounding like a budding Mafioso, then stormed out of his own hastily arranged news conference because he didn't like the line of questioning. Then there was Hardin's veiled threat against federal agent and investigator Jeff Novitzky -- "If he ever messes with Roger, Roger will eat his lunch." And just for good measure, a defamation lawsuit against McNamee that was effectively laughed out of court. ...

McNamee has come off as neither a sympathetic figure nor a trustworthy one ... [but his story] has never changed.

"I told the investigators I injected three people -- two of whom I know confirmed my account," he said then, referring to Clemens' teammates, Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch. "The third is sitting at this table."

T.J. Quinn, ESPN:

During a pre-trial hearing in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, defense attorney Rusty Hardin said Clemens' longtime personal trainer, Brian McNamee, was worried that a rape investigation involving him would lead the Yankees to fire him as their strength coach. Their argument is that [in 2001] McNamee took syringes and gauze pads with Clemens' DNA and tainted it with performance-enhancing drugs with the intention of blackmailing Clemens into giving him a job. ...

Prosecutors argued that telling the jury that McNamee was the subject of a rape investigation would be prejudicial, and U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said he was inclined to agree, although he did not issue a ruling. ...

It also was established on Tuesday that Clemens "is not a scholar of linguistics."

That point was put forward by one of his attorneys, Michael Attanasio, to make the case that when his client famously said Andy Pettitte "misremembered" a conversation about human growth hormone, he actually meant that he "misheard," ...

Clemens stared ahead without taking notes like he did at previous proceedings and walked so quickly out of the courthouse, surrounded by media, that his attorney called for him to slow down.

Juliet Macur, Times:

"In 1999 or 2000, I had a conversation with Roger Clemens in which Roger told me that he had taken human growth hormone," [Andy] Pettitte said in [his] affidavit, a potentially pivotal declaration if spoken before a jury.

"Everybody knows that Andy's a goody-two-shoes that will have a big impact on the jury," said Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and celebrity lawyer. "He has no motives to lie, no conceivable reason to testify against his best friend. So, if I'm a defense attorney, I would try to get him off the stand as soon as possible to minimize his impact." ...

Peter Keane, a professor at Golden Gate University School of Law, said Pettitte would be seen by the jury "as a very reluctant witness who just can't lie under oath, even for a close friend ... I think Clemens is in big trouble."