Clemens trial turns on McNamee credibility

WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors in the Roger Clemens perjury trial this week face perhaps their most daunting challenge yet: convincing the jury that Clemens' chief accuser, trainer Brian McNamee, is a credible witness despite the personal baggage he brings to the witness stand.

Legal experts said that task became even more critical to the government's case against Clemens after its other star witness -- Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte -- acknowledged last week that he's not certain he heard Clemens admit to using human growth hormone more than a decade ago.

McNamee, of Long Beach, is expected to testify that he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, 2000 and 2001, and then secretly kept used syringes, bloodstained cotton swabs and empty vials that once contained steroids.

Clemens is charged with lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied taking performance-enhancing drugs.

"Without McNamee, there is no case," said Barry Slotnick, a defense lawyer with the Manhattan-based firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney who has followed the case. "The jury has to now take his word over everybody else's."

Clemens' lawyer Rusty Hardin has made no secret of his intention to attack McNamee's character and motives. He has depicted McNamee to the jury as a serial liar who sought celebrity when he told federal investigators in 2007 about injecting Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs.

"We're not going to talk bad about anybody except Brian McNamee," Hardin said in his 75-minute opening statement, in which he mentioned McNamee's name 101 times. "And you decide from the evidence whether we're right about that."

Prosecutors are trying to limit how much the jury can learn about what prosecutors characterized as McNamee's "prior bad acts," including alleged substance abuse at the time he said he was injecting Clemens with steroids, misconduct as a New York City police officer and his purported involvement in prescription drug fraud.

Hardin also has subpoenaed the sealed records of McNamee's divorce in New York. Lawyers for both McNamee and his ex-wife moved last week to quash the subpoena.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who is expected to rule on those motions Monday, already has said Hardin can ask McNamee about lying to police as part of a 2001 sexual assault investigation in which he was never charged. But Hardin cannot refer to the nature of the investigation, Walton said.

"Rusty Hardin will try to paint Brian McNamee as a liar, a criminal and a bum that would do anything to save his own neck," said Anthony Sabino, a Mineola-based trial lawyer who has followed the case. "If he holds up from the blistering cross-examination, it'll be from his own resolve to vindicate his name, which has been sullied."

Sabino said McNamee's best strategy is to give short, direct answers and avoid emotion and confrontation. "By having the witness expound, it heightens your ability to poke holes in it and to trip him up," Sabino said. "It gives a skillful interrogator like Hardin the ability to do his magic."

Hardin already has accused McNamee in court of "manipulating" the needles, gauze and vials. Hardin says a medical expert will testify that it's possible McNamee could have put traces of performance-enhancing drugs on items that already contained Clemens' DNA.