Clemens juror: McNamee wasn't credible
Former Major League baseball pitcher Roger Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee leaves federal court in Washington on May 16, 2012. Credit: AP
WASHINGTON -- Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens' chief accuser, came off as "the biggest liar you've ever seen" and the materials he said he saved from a steroid injection looked like "6-year-old garbage," a juror said Tuesday.
Joyce Robinson-Paul said McNamee's lack of credibility made it easy for the panel of 12 jurors to discount the needle and swabs that tested positive for Clemens' DNA and anabolic steroids in acquitting the former Yankees pitcher of charges that he lied to Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
"You got six years of something in a can and you're going to bring that forth and use that as evidence? My God," she said about the syringes, ampoules and bloodstained tissues McNamee had saved in a crushed beer can since 2001.
She also noted the government's failure to present more evidence supporting McNamee's testimony that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone in 1998, 2000 and 2001.
"With all the resources available to them, the millions and millions of dollars that they spent, you think they could have come up with something better than that," said Robinson-Paul, a retired federal employee and a political activist.
Robinson-Paul said "more than a few" jurors were ready to acquit Clemens of all six counts just two hours into deliberations. McNamee could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The jury deliberated for a day and a half before delivering the verdict late Monday. That capped a two-month trial that featured 46 witnesses. McNamee, of Long Beach, was on the stand for more than five days.
"We decided not guilty because, in all due candor, it was [Clemens'] word against McNamee's word, and McNamee had lied on multiple occasions," Robinson-Paul said.
McNamee sparred with defense attorney Rusty Hardin over whether he had lied initially to federal investigators about the number of injections he gave Clemens and whether he kept evidence.
She said the jury dismissed Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte's testimony that Clemens told him a decade ago that he had used HGH because under cross-examination Pettitte agreed there was a 50-50 chance he might have misunderstood Clemens. "We let that go at that," she said.
Robinson-Paul said several of the eight female jurors "were sort of outraged" by Assistant U.S. Attorney Courtney Saleski's "hard-hitting" cross-examination of Clemens' wife, Debbie, regarding her testimony about a human growth hormone shot that McNamee gave her.
Robinson-Paul said "prosecutors made her out like some type of bad woman because she pulled her shirt up and let somebody stick her with a needle. We felt in all due candor that should not have had a bearing on her husband going to jail."
In considering the 13 statements by Roger Clemens cited in the obstruction of Congress charge, the jury spent a significant amount of time discussing whether Clemens lied when he testified that he didn't attend a Toronto Blue Jays pool party at outfielder Jose Canseco's home in 1998.
At one point during Clemens' deposition to congressional investigators, he said he wasn't at Canseco's house. But Debbie Clemens testified that he spent the night and prosecutors produced a photo of him in Canseco's pool.
"We realized he kept saying I was not at the party," Robinson-Paul said. "So he was not at the party. However, he was at the house. It's two different things."
