"Brian McNamee," Guerrero said, "would do whatever Roger Clemens wanted."
Clemens' lawyers repeatedly referred to the beer can evidence as "garbage" and did so again Tuesday. Hardin alleged the medical waste was manipulated by McNamee and contaminated by the way it was stored. Clemens lawyer Michael Attanasio also wondered how the "magic beer can" ended up containing waste from injections of other players.
"There's no doubt," Attanasio said, "the medical garbage is garbage."
But, the government argued, that only goes to show that McNamee didn't conjure up the evidence as part of some attempt to frame Clemens.
"If McNamee was trying to fabricate this evidence," Guerrero said, "don't you think he would have done a better job of it?"
When they left the courtroom to begin deliberations, the jurors were handed a complex verdict sheet that includes 13 Clemens statements that are alleged to have obstructed Congress. Hardin voiced outrage that the jury was being asked to make Clemens a convicted felon over some of the statements, including whether the pitcher was at teammate Jose Canseco's house on the day of a pool party in June 1998, an event the government called a "benchmark" days before McNamee's first injection of Clemens. McNamee said he saw Clemens talking with Canseco, who jurors heard was a steroids user.
"This is outrageous!" yelled Hardin, his face reddening as he pounded the podium three times.
Clemens said at his deposition that he wasn't at Canseco's house on the day of the party, but evidence at the trial showed that he was. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has said he had some concerns as to whether the party was relevant to the case. Either way, Hardin said some of Clemens' wayward statements to Congress simply came from a man trying his best to remember and shouldn't be a reason to return a guilty verdict.
"He's a Cy Young baseball player," Hardin said in reference to the award for pitching prowess. "Not a Cy Young witness. ... He's a human being just like everyone else in here."
The two sides disputed the validity of testimony of the two wives in the case. Debbie Clemens said McNamee injected her with HGH in her master bathroom in Houston without her husband's knowledge. McNamee said Roger Clemens was present for the shot.
Eileen McNamee confirmed parts of her husband's testimony: She said he told her at the time he was saving the medical waste for his own protection. But she contradicted other parts, including his assertion that he saved the beer can evidence to keep her from nagging him about being a possible fall guy in a steroids investigation.
Prosecutor Courtney Saleski said Eileen McNamee's motives are in question because the couple is going through a contentious divorce.
"Eileen McNamee," Saleski said, "is in self-protection mode."
Highlighting the scope of the FBI's investigation of Clemens, Hardin produced a map that showed the government conducting 235 interviews with 179 people involving 93 federal agents or officers — all in the name of trying to find more evidence that Clemens used steroids and HGH.
"Not one single blankety-blank piece of evidence after all of this effort. ... Not one single bit of evidence for 4 1/2 years of anybody other than Brian McNamee connecting Roger Clemens to steroids and HGH," Hardin said. "My God, if you're going to go to this kind of effort to prove this man lied to Congress, you'd better come home with some kind of bacon."
After Hardin's presentation, Clemens and the attorney embraced for several seconds, with Clemens patting the lawyer's back four times. Attanasio hugged Debbie Clemens a few feet away. Clemens, 49, walked down the hallway with his four sons in tow, one of the sons draping his arm around his father.
While the judge and jury will decide whether Clemens is guilty and goes to jail, the outcome will be irrelevant for many fans who've already decided that he cheated to maintain his success late in his career. Clemens himself told Congress at the 2008 hearing that "no matter what we discuss here today, I'm never going to have my named restored."
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