Comments on: Bad sports

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 01:02:18 +0000

Radley Balko's case summary: "Roger Clemens goes on trial for lying . . . to politicians. Which is a bit like putting a woman on trial for flashing her breasts at a stripper."

By: Dwight Brown

Dwight Brown — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:15:57 +0000

“There have been casualties in this war on steroids. Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and Dana Stubblefield, all black,”

I’d suggest that Marion Jones is a bad choice for that list; Jones was convicted of perjury, partially for her involvement with BALCO, but also in part for lying about her involvement in a check fraud scheme. I don’t believe there are many folks who would argue that the government shouldn’t go after people who participate in actual fraud.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:59:34 +0000

When you said “perjury trap” I thought “a-ha, he’s going to discuss the way that perjury and similar charges are mostly used these days as a ‘We Know You Dunnit’ in high-profile criminal cases, so that the jury can provide a sop to public moral outrage without having to convict the person of a serious charge that they would have to appeal”.

Instead it’s a weird ramble about how celebrities are so dumb that you shouldn’t put them on the stand.

By: Ron Coleman

Ron Coleman — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:50:54 +0000

Cville, you may be right about a number of perjury cases, but I don’t think what you’ve described applies to the Clemens trial.

Foxfier, Congress wastes lots of time on lots of things. Wondering about why will only make you blue. On the other hand, is there really so much to wonder about here? Drug policy and baseball’s antitrust exemption are two established topics of Congress’s policy attention. Again, to say merely that they should not be may satisfy our political instincts, but accepting that they are, and that Congress is made up of, well, elected people, should put most of the wonderment about this to rest. They meddle, they grandstand, and hey, they’re Congress.

By: Nicolas Martin

Nicolas Martin — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:40:57 +0000

This should have been a commentary about a corrupt and abusive justice system seeking any means of criminalizing behavior. Instead it is a puerile rant about Clemens being a “big boy.” In short, a disgrace.

By: Foxfier

Foxfier — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:55:42 +0000

I do not excuse lying under oath. It doesn’t matter how stupid something is, or how much you shouldn’t have to testify or any other excuse, there’s no reason to lie about it. REALLY no reason, what with the 5th and all…

That said, I’m still wondering why the blank Congress was wasting time with this, and I’ve been complaining about it the whole time.
(The sadly less universal banality about the case, I’d guess.)

By: Cville

Cville — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:53:47 +0000

The problem with the perjury charges is that they are becoming more about remembering past details in the age of ubiquitous, loss-less digital information. A growing number of cases seems to follow this pattern: put a defendant under oath, collect statements about something that happened 2 or 5 years ago, show that these memory don’t match the records, call it perjury and prosecute. In some case the original charges are not even pressed — just the perjury. This is overlaywered.