Charles P Pierce- The Clemens verdict and our senseless national drug hysteria

[n2doc]

By Charles P. Pierce on June 19, 2012


I would like a refund now, please, from the Department of Justice, perhaps something from petty cash, or even some loose AK's like the ones the Department of Justice allowed to come into gun smugglers' possession so they could be tracked into Mexican drug cartels, as though arming some of the world's most dangerous criminals ever made sense beyond the boardrooms in D.C. It didn't, and it made only marginally more sense to pursue Roger Clemens in court, not once, but twice.

It has not been a good spring before the bar for our federal gumshoes. First, down in North Carolina, former senator John Edwards walks in what may be the tawdriest personal scandal in our national politics since Alexander Hamilton was foozling that Reynolds woman. Edwards walked because the entire prosecution required that 12 simple souls understand the arcane subtleties of our campaign finance laws, something that most political lawyers understand only well enough to know how to break while staying out of the hoosegow. And now Clemens walks, a second time, because his entire prosecution required that a similar passel of simple souls understand the federal statute for lying to Congress, something that almost all of official Washington has chosen to ignore since half-past Iran-Contra. They both walk because, in a very real sense, they weren't being tried for the crimes with which they were charged.

Both Edwards and Clemens were being tried on de facto charges of Being A Public Sleazeball. Edwards for siring a child with his flaky mistress while his wife was dying of cancer and he was running for president, and Clemens for apparently believing that he could get away with anything that boosted his performance on the field. Both prosecutions depended on testimony from people who clearly could have been brought before any bar on exactly the same charges. In Edwards's case, it was Andrew Young, the world's most lavishly appointed beard. With Clemens, it was the incredible circus parade of friends, hangers-on, and sidewalk pharmacists that the prosecution trotted through the courtroom. Now, people rarely commit crimes in front of massed children's choirs, and you go to court with the witnesses you have. But if you know you're trying someone for the crime of Being A Public Sleazeball, it helps if you have one or two witnesses on whom the jurors don't feel automatically compelled to spit.

We all should have seen the Clemens verdict coming from the end of the first trial when, in a veritable tsunami of flop-sweat, the prosecution tried to introduce evidence that Judge Reggie Walton had already excluded. Now, whether or not you believe that the prosecution tanked their own case on purpose because they knew it had been rendered a loser — something I believe more strongly after yesterday's developments than I did at the time — or whether you believe the government's lawyers thought Walton had fallen into a coma and wouldn't notice what they were doing, trying Clemens a second time has to be the biggest waste of federal criminal-justice resources since the last time Alberto Gonzales drew a paycheck. At least the prosecutors in the Edwards case have decided to cut their losses and go home.

more
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8071810/the-roger-clemens-verdict-our-senseless-national-drug-hysteria

[trumad]

1. I hate cheaters in Baseball...

With that said---this was one of the biggest bullshit cases in a long long time.

The Congressional investigation was nothing more than navel gazing.

What a huge waste of Tax payer money.

[Auggie]

2. So we turn a blind eye to perjurers?

Might as well flush the court system down the toilet.

[JonLP24]

3. That wasn't the point of the article

He addressed that
(And, just as an aside, I think lying during government investigations is a serious damn business and ought to be prosecuted. It's just that, what's sauce for Elliott Abrams and Scooter Libby is sauce for a strutting gander like Clemens, and at least Clemens got a verdict that will stand. He won't need a president to step in and pardon him on the way out the door. The charge has been hopelessly devalued over the past few decades, and convicting Roger Clemens while letting actual public servants get away with it wouldn't have changed that.)

<snip>

but the point I think is best summed up in this paragraph.

In our drug wars, all damage is collateral damage. We trash civil liberties, abuse prosecutorial discretion, countenance hopeless grandstanding among our political elites, and endow our judicial process with the essential — and extraordinarily un-American — dynamics of the witch hunt and the show trial. It was the former that ensnared Clemens in a perjury trap, and it was the latter in which the matter was adjudicated. The government brought this case because it needed a high-profile win to justify all the money and time it has wasted chasing everyone in baseball who ever looked sideways at a hypodermic needle. Off on the sidelines, the anti-drug industrial complex stood up and cheered, when it wasn't spinning the old drug-warrior boogedy-boogedy that is its stock in trade every time drugs make the country crazy again. I listen these days to what comes out of, say, the United States Anti-Doping Agency and all I hear is Mel Brooks as the cross-eyed governor William J. LePetomaine from Blazing Saddles.

[Auggie]

5. Yes, just don't confuse the original investigation with the ensuing perjury trial

I agree with the consensus that Congress should never had opened the investigation. That was nothing but political grandstanding. But just because it was a bullshit investigation doesn't mean you ignore perjurers.

And I don't agree that the motive was to get "a high-profile win to justify all the money and time ... chasing everyone in baseball who ever looked sideways at a hypodermic needle. Courts should, and do, take accusations of perjury / obstruction of justice very seriously, and I applaud their efforts to prosecute suspected violators. In the Clemens case they obviously underestimated the tools his defensive team would utilize.

[n2doc]

4. Sure

In your tbagger inspired all or nothing world, if those are the choices given...
but they are not.

[bluedigger]

6. I hope you are not calling Auggie a teabagger.

Tell me that isn't what I'm hearing.

[joeybee12]

7. My concern, too...nt

[Auggie]

8. I thought it was a general statement applying to how teabaggers

want to see the world.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. I Agree With You In Principle, But Disagree On Substance

The problem was that there would have been no perjury had there been no silly hearings by a grandstanding Congress.

The money wasting STARTED when Congress stuck their nose into this. If no hearings, Clemens isn't there. If he isn't there, no perjury.

There is almost(!) and element of entrapment here. (I empahsized "almost".) There would have been no possibility of lying to Congress had they not had the hearings. And, they still could have grandstanded by simply not swearing in the testifiers.

Now, while i believe that Clemens juiced, and nothing he says or does will change my opinion, and while i do think perjury needs to be punished, this is a case where the case was rooted in questions asked by people who should never have been involved.
GAC

[Auggie]

11. Post #5, Professor

Grandstanding by Congress. Unfortunately (perhaps), the system was then obligated to look into if Clemens perjured.

Excellent thought about entrapment. Yes, I guess you could say there's an element of it in almost any "inquisition" of this kind.

[joeybee12]

9. Ok, I read the whole thing, and he's wrong...

He's trying to tie Bonds and Clemens into the general war on drugs, and it's nothing like that...I think our war on drugs is misguided and counter-productive, but the govt going after Bonds and Clemens is in no way connected to our war on drugs mentality. I usually like Charles, but he is out in left field on this one.