Segui may be asked to testify against Clemens

WASHINGTON -- On an abbreviated day in which testimony from former Yankees trainer Gene Monahan was the entirety of what came before the jury, arguments outside jurors' presence on a government motion to add witnesses -- including former Major Leaguer David Segui -- became the major issue Wednesday at the federal perjury trial of Roger Clemens.

The government has moved to bring in testimony from Segui and investment manager Anthony Corso to rebut the defense's attacks of bias and self-interest made against key prosecution witness Brian McNamee, the former strength and conditioning coach for Clemens for nearly a decade.

Judge Reggie Walton has yet to formally rule on the motion, saying he'll think about it overnight, but he initially seemed swayed by the government's contention that testimony from Segui and Corso could be brought in to rebut, among other things, the defense's assertion that McNamee changed his story on why he kept evidence he says he used to inject Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs in August 2001.

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Courtney Saleski suggested at the end of the day that Segui, who is under subpoena, is reluctant about testifying in the trial, Walton made it clear that if he rules Segui should testify, Segui had better comply.

"If he doesn't show up, he'll be arrested like anyone else. ... He'd better be on the run because the marshals will be after him," Walton said before leaving the courtroom for the day.

Testimony from Segui and Corso could be crucial in bolstering the credibility of McNamee, whose testimony covered more than 26 hours and elicited some 29 questions from jurors after both sides had gone through their examinations of Clemens' chief accuser.

Clemens is charged with three counts of making false statements, two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of Congress based on his testimony during a Feb. 13, 2008, hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a Feb. 5, 2008, deposition conducted by committee staff members. Clemens said at the hearing, "Let me be clear: I have never used steroids or [human growth hormone]."

McNamee, who served as a strength and conditioning trainer to Clemens in one capacity or another for nearly a decade, said in his own deposition and at that same hearing that he had injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs on numerous occasions, keeping items he says proves it for several years in a beer can and a mailing box. Clemens said McNamee had injected him with vitamin B12 and lidocaine.

Part of the government's motion is that McNamee told Segui sometime in 2001 he kept "darts," or needles, from other players in order to placate his wife, which is what McNamee testified during the trial last week.

The government also wants to include testimony that sometime between 2002 and 2004 McNamee told Corso, one of his Wall Street training clients, that Clemens used HGH to help with recovery and in 2005 told Corso about keeping the evidence.

Walton's main reason for being swayed by the government motion was the defense's assertions that McNamee was only telling federal investigators what they wanted to hear in 2007 to avoid prosecution.

"It seems to me the real thrust of the cross-examination of [McNamee] is that's when any motive to fabricate was engendered," Walton said, adding that therefore, based on case law, the prior statements likely would be admissible.

Defense attorney Rusty Hardin said McNamee wanted to "use the leverage from creating this stuff all the way back to 2001."

But Walton asked Hardin why, then, he "beat up on him so much" about the 2007 government investigation as a reason for McNamee's motive to out Clemens as a user of performance-enhancing drugs. Hardin said McNamee was always going to keep the items as a "hole card" to use against Clemens, suggesting it was always there as a way to blackmail his client, with whom McNamee worked until 2007.

Saleski followed up by suggesting that if McNamee had wanted to use the items to blackmail Clemens, he more likely would have done so when his financial and personal world was crumbling in 2005 or '06. She also pointed out that what has transpired at the trial does not back the defense claim that it suggested to the jury that McNamee always intended to use the items against Clemens.

"It's just not supported by the record and doesn't make sense," Saleski said of the defense theory, saying it was a "speculative concept."

If Segui does testify -- that is, unless he goes on the run from the U.S. Marshals, he would become the second Major Leaguer to testify in the trial, following current Yankees comeback pitcher Andy Pettitte.

Monahan, who retired in 2011 after 39 years as head athletic trainer for the Yankees, became the fourth current or former Major League trainer to testify in the case. He said that vitamin B12 shots were not lined up for players after games -- Clemens told Congress they were -- but that he did personally inject Clemens with B12, having told Congressional investigators he had not.

"I'm pretty darn sure I did at least once, yes," said Monahan, who added that he also once gave Clemens a shot of Toradol, a painkiller, but not lidocaine, which he said generally was combined with an anti-inflammatory injected by a physician.

Monahan said when illness was getting around the clubhouse he occasionally lined up cups for a "team gargle" but figured the only time more than one syringe would ever be loaded at once for something was for flu shots given during Spring Training physicals.

Like others before him, Monahan said McNamee would have no authority to inject any player with anything.

Some of Monahan's direct testimony related to a January 2000 memo he wrote to Yankees GM Brian Cashman and then-manager Joe Torre after visiting Clemens in Houston while in Texas for a trainers' convention. He said that Clemens "maintains complete confidence and respect for this individual," referring to McNamee, who had not yet been hired by the Yankees.

Hardin focused on other parts of the memo in cross-examination, with Monahan telling his bosses that Clemens was doing three throwing sessions a week, with aerobic exercise on the days between, and that his "attitude and condition" was excellent. Monahan also said under cross that Clemens' workout and training regimen in '99 -- before McNamee was reunited with him -- was "intense" and that his fellow teammates wanted to follow it: "He was the mother duck and they were the other ducklings," Monahan said.

Monahan testified on redirect examination that the medicine cabinet in the Yankees' training office had a double lock -- one with a key and another with a combination that only he and then-assistant trainer and now head trainer Steve Donohue knew in their heads - in testimony designed to suggest McNamee couldn't have gotten into the Yankees' medical supplies. He also said he'd met Clemens when he was at the 1986 All-Star Game, and that when Clemens joined the Yankees in 1999 he was "a stronger athlete than he was in '86."

Walton discussed the schedule of the trial and said he is going to limit a previously scheduled trip to just being away on June 14, assuming the trial will go that long, or at least that jurors will still be in deliberations.