Clemens Lawyer Finds Right Pitch in Latest Acquittal
red sole shoes saleAt one point in the just-completed perjury trial of Roger Clemens in Washington, D.C., the district court judge grew so irate with the baseball great's Houston defense lawyer, Rusty Hardin, that he began complaining: "I don't know how you all practice law down in Texas..."That sparked an immediate shouting match, with Mr. Hardin yelling back at Judge Reggie Walton: "Same as anyplace else!"The Monday acquittal of Mr. Clemens on all charges marks Mr. Hardin's latest victory and, as usual, owed as much to his dogged pretrial digging as it did to the lawyer's folksy charm and killer instinct in front of a jury."He's an absolute fiend for preparation," said Charles "Chip" Babcock, a Houston defense lawyer and friend of Mr. Hardin's. "You can be the most charming and charismatic lawyer in the world, but if you're not prepared—if you don't know your case—you're going to get murdered. Rusty lives by that."The two-pronged approach has helped Mr. Hardin, 70 years old, win cases on behalf of several high-profile athletes, including football's Warren Moon and baseball's Wade Boggs. He successfully represented the heir to Texas billionaire J. Howard Marshall against Anna Nicole Smith, to whom he had been married, and he won a civil case on behalf of Victoria Osteen, the wife of television evangelist Joel Osteen. His most prominent loss—the 2002 obstruction-of-justice conviction of client Arthur Anderson LLP—was reversed on appeal.Mr. Clemens had been charged with lying to Congress about using steroids, and the government relied heavily on testimony of Brian McNamee, a former trainer of Mr. Clemens's. Mr. McNamee told a team of investigators led by former Sen.
red bottom heelsGeorge Mitchell that he had injected Mr. Clemens with steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001.Shortly after Mr. McNamee's name surfaced in connection with Mr. Clemens in 2007, Mr. Hardin launched his own probe."The week after the Mitchell Report came out, we sent a team of investigators to Florida to find out more about Mr. McNamee," Mr. Hardin said Tuesday. "The witnesses that we found, well, you just can't imagine how helpful they were."Investigators for the defense unearthed, and managed to convey through witnesses during the two-month trial, that Mr. McNamee had been involved in a legal matter in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 2001 and had lied to criminal investigators. The testimony appeared to damage Mr. McNamee's credibility.Richard Emery, a lawyer for Mr. McNamee, said his client was hurt by a judicial ruling that limited the scope of testimony about the legal incident. "Mr. Hardin's use of the incident was artful in its distortion," Mr. Emery said. "It made it seem far worse than it was." Mr. Hardin's dogged investigations, often anchored by a former Houston police officer that works at his firm, have been bolstered by his homespun courtroom deliveries that have won over many juries.During a health-care-fraud trial several years ago, recalls Daniel Cogdell, a Houston defense lawyer, Mr. Hardin was cross-examining a government agent when he made what appeared to be a mistake—he asked the agent whether his client should have been indicted."He just turned the floor over to the agent, who talked for 10 minutes about all the bad things Rusty's client had done," said Mr. Cogdell. "But Rusty spent the next two hours blowing up everything the agent had said."At the Clemens trial, Mr. Hardin's demeanor didn't always work. After days of testimony about Mr. Clemens getting injections in his buttocks, Mr. Hardin tried to offer a different term for that part of the body: "the back of the lap." No one seemed to understand what he meant.Still, when questioning witnesses, Mr. Hardin proved effective, according to his co-counsel, Michael Attanasio.
red bottom shoes"The genius of Rusty was sensing a moment to actually invite McNamee to explain something, knowing that he would either change his story or make up an entirely new story, which he did," Mr. Attanasio said. "The challenge of agreeing on the format issue is the resistance or pushback from the Big Ten and Pac-12," a source said. "Will they say they'll agree to favor a four-team playoff instead of the plus-one if the four-team model is based on the conference champions? We'll see." There's also the issue of how the revenue will be distributed among the FBS membership with the new playoff. Past BCS performance is one proposal under consideration, sources told CBSSports.com. Also, how will the teams be selected? Will the commissioners recommend human polls, computers or a combination of the two? Or will they opt for a selection committee, similar to what's used in basketball? That all still must be determined. All of the recommendations will be forwarded to the presidents, who are somewhat at a disadvantage. All 12 conference commissioners have met at least six times, with several subcommittees meeting numerous other times or conducting teleconferences. The BCS Band has spent literally hundreds of hours jamming on the road trying to come up with one final greatest hit -- a new college football playoff model. The BCS commissioners will hand off their liner notes and make their recommendations to the Presidential Oversight Committee, who will decide what shape the new playoff will take. "The presidents aren't 'rubber stamping' anything we give them," a commissioner said. "The challenge is the commissioners have had eight or nine meetings, we've been talking about it for 100 hours and then you can't give it to the presidents and expect them to digest it in four hours."
