Another prominent (minority) athlete in trouble for lying about steriod use

The latest news on the steroid litigation front has to make Roger Clemens plenty worried. Here is today’s steroid development as reported in this Bloomberg article:

Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada was charged with lying to Congress about performance- enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball. Tejada “unlawfully, willingly and knowingly” failed to tell everything he knew about an unidentified player’s use of steroids and human growth hormone during meetings with the congressional investigators in August 2005, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said in a criminal information filed today in Washington.

A criminal information can’t be filed in a felony case without the consent of the defendant, according to Sullivan & Cromwell attorney Karen Patton Seymour, former chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. “Typically, consent is given when a plea agreement has been reached or is very close,” Seymour said in an interview.

Tejada, a citizen of the Dominican Republic who has a U.S. work permit, is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Washington tomorrow at 11 a.m., a spokesman for the court said.

I didn’t even know that Tejada was in the cross-hairs of federal investigators, and it will be interesting to see what kind of deal might have already been put together before this story broke. 

Whatever the particulars are related to Tejada, this latest federal charge makes me even more eager to see Roger Clemens subject to federal prosecution for his apparently false testimony to Congress.  Few persons were even aware that prominent minority defendants like Marion Jones and Barry Bonds and now Miguel Tejada ever testified about their alleged steroid use.  But Roger Clemens brazenly asked to testify before Congress and then offered testimony that did not seem at all credible (at least to me).  The percpetion of equal justice will be poorly served if only prominent minority altheles face charges for lying about steroid use.

Some related posts:

• Marion Jones gets six-month federal prison term
• Feds get another conviction in steroid investigations
• Another federal sentence for another athlete lying about steroid use
• A fascinating prosecutorial critique of the steroid investigation
• Should Roger Clemens now be indicted for perjury?
• More on Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, perjury prosecutions and race concerns
• “McNamee’s Lawyer Predicts Clemens Pardon”
• Barry Bonds indicted, what would be his guideline range?