The pace of the Roger Clemens perjury trial is moving a bit too slow for U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who said the trial has been full of repeated questions that are wasting the court's time. That is why he opened court on Monday telling lawyers from both the prosecution and defense that he would put time limits on questions if need be.
Still, none of that stopped Monday's proceedings from seeming to be even slower than usual for some media.
Judge started today by saying he was going crack down to make #Clemens trial go faster. Turned out to be most frustratingly slow day yet.
— Joseph White Jr. (@JGWhiteAP) May 7, 2012
Part of what slowed down the process was the jury arriving late, due to one of the jurors (a new lawyer) being sworn in as an officer of the court. Walton said that if he had known this was the case, he would've sworn her in himself.
The delay lasted almost an hour before former federal agent Jeff Novitzky testified that Clemens was not a target in the federal investigation into performance enhancing drugs and that the pursuit was for the distributors rather than the users. But McNamee gave him up.
ESPN reported that after Novitzky's testimony, jurors were allowed to ask him questions, some of which indicated they weren't too sure about his testimony
One juror asked why the evidence collected in January 2008 took so long for it to come forward, to which the answer was essentially that it takes time to gather and submit evidence (especially if it comes out of Miller Lite can). Another juror asked if Novitzky had spoken to prosecutors about his testimony during the weekend break Novitzky answered yes, which is not uncommon in these situations, but still shows there's a chance the jury isn't totally sold on the government's lead law enforcement witness.
And aside from all of that, the prosecution took a blow when Walton blocked their attempt to use portions of Clemens' 60 Minutes interview with the late, great Mike Wallace in 2008.
The video is supposed to show that Clemens tells different versions of a story to Wallace and Congress as to why he did not meet with former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. Clemens told Wallace that he listened to his legal counsel and if he had known what Brian McNamee was saying about him in the Mitchell Report, he would have met with Mitchell.
Clemens, of course, told Congress that he didn't know Mitchell wanted to meet with him and his lawyers were "derelict in their duties" to him. Walton sided with the defense, saying this:
"In my view, that implicates to attorney-client privilege, and therefore it cannot come in (as admissible evidence)."
The defense also filed a motion on Monday to get rid of Andy Pettitte's testimony of a "50-50" recollection of Clemens admitting to him about 12 years ago that he used HGH. The defense motion read:
"The court should not allow the jury to consider an alleged 'admission' that has all the weight of a coin flip,"
The most riveting testimony will be later this week, that of Brian McNamee, Clemens' former strength coach and the only one who claims to have direct knowledge of Clemens' steroid and HGH use.
Read more about the Clemens trial at our StoryStream here. Check out news and notes on the Astros at From The Crawfish Boxes.