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Roger Clemens' Prosecutors Seek Retrial

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Sat Aug 20, 2011 at 12:36:41 PM EST
Tags: Roger Clemens (all tags)
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The Government has filed its brief in support of a retrial of baseball giant Roger Clemens (available here.) They say their "inadvertent mistake" of failing to redact their trial exhibit of Congressman Cumming's testimony restating Laura Pettitte's statement about her husband's comments to her about a conversation with Clemens was not done for the purpose of goading the defense to request a mistrial.

They also claim they thought the trial was going well. As support, they include a blog post and a news article. I wonder if either author was in the courtroom for the trial.

Not explained: Why the prosecutor didn't stop the playing of the tape the minute he realized Laura Pettitte's statement was on it. All the Government says is, well, the defense didn't either. Considering the judge had just ruled days before Laura Pettitte's statements were inadmissible, the prosecutor should have stopped it immediately, knowing he was introducing banned material.

Also not addressed: The defense claim that they had repeatedly asked for the revised tape exhibits and the Government kept putting it off. [More...]

From the mistrial hearing transcript:

Motions in limine hearing, July 5th, the day after the holiday. After that date, several times, including on July 11th, and I invite counsel to disagree with me if he does, but on as recently as July 11th at 3:11 p.m., is when we finally got the government's marked exhibits. It's not that we've had them for weeks and weeks and weeks. We never got them despite repeated requests, please give us your marked exhibits, and I don't think government counsel will disagree, until the 11th Hour. And then they moved them in rapidly this morning, and then suddenly we see it on the screen.

So, post Your Honor's rulings, we asked for new exhibits. So, in relation to Your Honor's last comment, we had asked for those repeatedly. And Mr. Durham apologized and cited resource constrictions at the U.S. Attorney's office for why we didn't have them. We understood, under Your Honor's general order, we were to have them three days before the trial. So, we have been pestering, I think that's a fair verb, probably how they would characterize my e-mails, we have been pestering them for marked exhibits in the wake of Your Honor's ruling before and since.(my emphasis)

I don't think the Government forgot to redact the tape because they were busy with other things. I think, from t