For all of the disappointment of the John Edwards trial at least for the Justice Department there’s still another chance for prosecutors to land a high-profile conviction: Roger Clemens. The mistrial in the Edwards campaign-finance case May 31 now puts an even greater spotlight on the Clemens case. The baseball star is charged with lying to Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
A chief criticism of the Clemens and Edwards cases: The government squandered resources on aggressive, rare charges that never should have been filed. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is prosecuting Clemens. In the Edwards case, trial attorneys in DOJ’s public integrity section were on the ground in North Carolina. “While I didn’t do anything I thought was illegal, I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong,” Edwards said outside the courthouse. “There is no one else responsible for my sins.”
