Veteran prosecutors’ rookie mistake, no-nonsense judge lead to Clemens mistrial

So what happens now with this case? How could they make such a rookie mistake? Only time will tell how he and his numbers will be noted in history.

The demise of the perjury trial of Roger Clemons was sown in one of the most routine moments of any prosecution: the playing of a video for jurors.

It actually was the fifth cued up that day, showing Clemens’s testimony before a House committee. While tedious, the clips were an essential part of the Justice Department’s case that the baseball legend had lied to Congress in 2008, when he told lawmakers that he had never taken performance-enhancing drugs.

Within moments of the tape’s rolling, the trial was over, and the prosecutors sat slumped and dejected in their chairs.

A judge had declared a mistrial, ruling that the tape included evidence he had barred from the jury.

The dramatic decision left legal observers wondering how such a high-profile prosecution could end so abruptly, on just the second day of testimony. A review of transcripts and interviews with people knowledgeable about what happened reveals that federal prosecutors did not intentionally introduce barred evidence to the jury. Despite years of experience, two well-respected prosecutors had made a basic mistake and not carefully reviewed the videos they planned to show jurors.

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