Roger Clemens found not guilty of perjury
Former Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens arrives for a hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, on Sept. 2, 2011. The hearing will decide whether the former Red Sox and Yankees pitcher should be retried after his original trial on perjury was declared a mistrial. Clemens is accused of one count of obstruction of Congress, three counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury, stemming from his 2008 testimony before Congress on the use of performance enhancing drugs.
Roger Clemens, legendary baseball pitcher, was found not guilty of all six counts against him on Monday, CNN reported.
Clemens was accused of lying during a 2008 Congressional investigation of the use of performance-enhancing drugs by major league players. He was charged with one count of obstruction of Congress, three counts of making false statements, and two counts of perjury, the New York Times reported. Though he was not charged with drug use, his denial of such use was part of the case against him, the Times reported.
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The 49-year-old pitcher and seven-time Cy Young Award winner faced a maximum sentence of 30 years and a $1.5 million fine if found guilty, and wiped tears from his eyes and bit his lip as the jury's verdict was read, Yahoo Sports reported.
This was not the US government’s first attempt to convict Clemens: he was also tried last spring, but the proceedings were declared a mistrial on the second day after the prosecution showed inadmissible evidence to the jury, Sports Illustrated reported.
This time around, the case was much more thorough: the jury, comprised of eight women and four men spent eight weeks in court hearing from 46 witnesses, the Times reported.
Brian McNamee, the pitcher's former trainer, spent over a week in court testifying that he had injected Clemens with steroids during 1998, 2000, and 2001, according to Sports Illustrated.
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The jury had been deliberating since last Tuesday, the Times reported.
Clemens is up for induction into the Hall of Fame for the first time, but "the damage done to Clemens’s reputation through the long process of this case makes it highly unlikely that he will receive enough votes from baseball writers — he needs to be named on 75 percent of the ballots — to win induction," according to the New York Times' Juliet Macur.
“What happened in this case is a horrible, horrible overreach of the government and everyone involved,” Clemens’s lawyer Rusty Hardin said in court, according to the Times.
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