Photo credit: The Topps Company | Topps baseball card of former Met David Segui. Segui was called as a witness in the Roger Clemens perjury trial.
WASHINGTON -- Former major-leaguer David Segui testified as a government witness in the Roger Clemens perjury trial Thursday that strength coach Brian McNamee told him in 2001 that he had kept "darts" used for steroid injections of "players" to placate his wife.
"He said he had kept the darts," or needles, said Segui, a former Met and admitted steroid user, recalling the decade-old telephone call. Segui said McNamee also told him then that his wife had raised the idea of saving the used needles.
Segui said McNamee was "venting and frustrated" and told him "he was having problems with his wife" because of the amount of time McNamee had been spending with Clemens, and because McNamee had told her he would leave the family to be with Clemens "at the drop of a hat."
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Segui's appearance could help bolster McNamee's credibility with jurors by presenting testimony that he did not create the evidence in 2007 to appease federal authorities determined to link Clemens to steroids, as defense lawyer Rusty Hardin suggested in his cross-examination of McNamee last week.
But when Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilberto Guerrero asked Segui about a second conversation that he had with McNamee about the evidence, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled it was inadmissible and told jurors they cannot consider it.
Under questioning by defense attorney Michael Attanasio, Segui admitted McNamee never mentioned Clemens in reference to the "darts," and that McNamee had never told him that Clemens used steroids.
Friday, as the government wraps up the presentation of its case, prosecutors plan to put businessman Anthony Corso, a training client of McNamee, on the stand to testify that McNamee in the early 2000s told him that Clemens used human growth hormone, and also about needles McNamee saved.
Testimony of a DNA expert who according to prosecutors will say that testing found Clemens' DNA on the needles, swabs and cotton balls saved by McNamee also will conclude Friday.
Earlier Thursday, Jeremy Price, an expert in steroid screening at Anti-Doping Research lab, said testing of two needles and two bloodstained cotton balls that McNamee had saved had found the presence of steroids, but had not found any traces of liquid vitamin B12 or lidocaine.
Prosecutors presented that evidence to contradict Clemens' public statements and testimony to Congress that McNamee had injected with him with B12 and lidocaine, but not steroids.
But in questions to Price, Attanasio raised the possibility that B12 could be washed out of the needles and replaced with steroids, and that drops of steroids could have been put on the cotton balls.
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