Clemens trial picks up pace; Radomski testifies

WASHINGTON -- The 12th day of the federal perjury trial of Roger Clemens began with Judge Reggie Walton warning lawyers from both sides that the pace of the proceedings was frustrating him and boring the jury.

By the end of Tuesday's proceedings, an afternoon of testimony from steroids dealer Kirk Radomski, the fifth witness to take the stand on the day, appeared to have jurors paying close attention.

Jurors often took notes and generally seemed focused during Radomski's account of how he became a Mets batboy in 1985 at age 15 and by 1991 had begun a 15-year run of using and distributing performance-enhancing drugs to players and others associated with baseball, eventually including strength coach Brian McNamee -- the prosecution's star witness against Clemens and someone Radomski acknowledged became a good friend.

With the government laying the foundation for the much-anticipated testimony from McNamee, direct examination of Radomski by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilberto Guerrero concluded at 4:48 p.m. ET. But, before Walton sent the court into recess at 5 p.m., defense attorney Michael Attanasio managed to suggest to jurors that Radomski's business of dealing steroids was far more lucrative than he was letting on in direct testimony.

Before jurors entered his courtroom Tuesday morning at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Walton raised his voice in repeating a message he has delivered to attorneys from both sides several times: The trial has been moving too slowly, and the jury was reacting to it.

"If you're not observing them, you need to watch them. These folks are fed up," Walton said.

After telling attorneys "I am putting you all on warning" about picking up the pace, Walton said his clerk informed him of conversations she had with jurors that intimated they might be discussing the charges against Clemens. Any discussion among the jurors before deliberations begin is strictly forbidden.

"Jurors start to talk about the case because they're bored," Walton told attorneys before reminding jurors that they can't yet discuss the case.

Clemens is being tried on six federal charges of perjury, giving false statements and obstruction of Congress for telling the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2008 that he never used performance-enhancing drugs. McNamee testified before Congress that he injected Clemens with steroids and human-growth hormone on numerous occasions, saving drugs, syringes and medical waste the government has introduced as evidence in the trial.

Once the trial resumed, the day's testimony moved more briskly than on previous days. The government completed its redirect examination of Federal Bureau of Investigation case agent John Longmire and moved on to trainers who worked on clubs Clemens played for during the first part of his career: former Red Sox trainers Charlie Moss and Jim Rowe, and former Blue Jays trainer Tommy Craig.

Under direct examination from Guerrero, the trainers each were asked whether they ever had authority to administer injections of lidocaine or vitamin B12. Each of them answered they did not, nor would a strength trainer such as McNamee.

Clemens testified before Congress that McNamee injected him with lidocaine and vitamin B12, not steroids or HGH. Clemens also testified that there regularly would be several syringes of B12 laid out in the trainer's room, ready to be delivered to players after games.

Asked whether he ever saw B12 syringes lined up the way Clemens described, Craig said, "Not one time," essentially echoing what the other trainers said.

Toward the end of his testimony, the government asked Craig about medical reports during the 1998 season relating to an abscess on Clemens' right buttock. The records stated that Clemens received a B12 injection 7-10 days earlier from a team doctor; however, prosecutors are expected to contend the abscess came from a steroids injection administered by McNamee.

Radomski then took the stand, relating his story of how he began taking and dealing steroids when he was 20 or 21 years old and still employed by the Mets as a clubhouse attendant, hoping to increase his body mass. Radomski said he would receive the drugs on a barter system with other users and received HGH from kits left unused by AIDS clinics. He said he wound up selling the drugs primarily to baseball players, and testified he met McNamee through a ballplayer friend around 1999 or 2000.

Radomski provided the jury with details on what needles were used for what drugs -- for instance, longer, large-gauge needles would be used for oil-based steroids while smaller insulin needles could be used for water-based steroids as well as HGH. He testified about how he became a major source to baseball players not only of the drugs but how to properly combine and use them. Radomski said that after McNamee became a client in 1999 or 2000, he was "teaching" McNamee how to properly administer the drugs.

Radomski detailed how he would meet with McNamee either in a bank parking lot or at a diner in the Breezy Point section of Queens where McNamee lived to deliver steroids and HGH and accept payment for them. He viewed photos of the evidence introduced earlier by the government of the vials, syringes and needles McNamee kept in a beer can before turning over to authorities in 2008 and identified them as coming directly from him because of the specific brands and types of items.

"These are unique to what I was getting," Radomski said.

Radomski testified that certain drugs and combinations would be "tailored to what guys wanted to do," and that steroids like Deca Durabolin used together with testosterone were especially effective for pitchers because it would help with endurance without putting on body mass.

Radomski, who now runs a business that sells "all-natural" supplements, testified about the day federal agents executed a search warrant on his house on Long Island in 2005 and how he became a cooperator with the government, telling agents about every call he took from clients. He also said he "wasn't there to lynch anyone" in his three meetings with Sen. George Mitchell and the investigators for the Mitchell Report.

As for the shipping receipts already entered as evidence -- including one addressed to McNamee at Clemens' Houston home -- Radomski said he found them under his "dinosaur of a TV" in 2008 before turning them over to authorities. He said an envelope containing the receipts as well as autographed photos of Clemens and Andy Pettitte must have "slid underneath the TV."

Facing five years imprisonment on the distribution charge and 20 more on the money-laundering charge, plus $500,000 in fines, Radomski eventually was given status as a "5K" cooperator, the highest level of cooperation. Judge Susan Illston, who presided over the cases linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) investigation, sentenced Radomski to five years' probation and a fine of $18,575.

In the beginning of cross examination, Attanasio mentioned that in a memoir Radomski had written he claimed to use tickets to the World Series, the Super Bowl and other events like currency in his steroids dealings. After establishing that Radomski had never seen Clemens injected with anything, Attanasio also suggested Radomski made plenty of money off the book and from dealing steroids. Radomski said he "broke even" on the book and has worked many jobs to support his household.

"See my hands?" Radomski said, raising the palms to face Attanasio. "These are the hands of a hard-working guy."

But Attanasio pressed him on whether proceeds from his drug-dealing were, as the plea agreement displayed in court stated, used to finance the split-level house, which he testified was custom built in 2002.

"Is that your signature, given under oath?" Attanasio said to Radomski, who agreed it was his signature on the plea agreement.

Radomski will return to the stand at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday to undergo further cross-examination on a day abbreviated by commitments two jurors have outside of court.