Feds Streamline Charges Against Bonds

The most intriguing thing to us all about the Barry Bonds news out Thursday isn’capital t the news itself, that federal prosecutors cut the number of felony charges contrary to the former slugger coming from 11 to 5.

Bonds has pleaded not accountable.

Frankly, we have been most surprised by the realization that, yes, it looks similar to this prosecution is going to trial the following month.

Why does this particular surprise us? Due to the fact we’d mainly forgotten about the whole saga. The case — a perjury prosecution — is heading in to its fourth year. (The initial indictment against Bonds dropped in 2007, when he was nevertheless posting sick amounts for the San francisco bay area Giants.)

Since the period, Barry Bonds has melted almost completely out of the public consciousness.

This strikes us as not really such good information for the justice. Once upon an occasion, the Bonds situation felt like something larger than a straightforward perjury inquiry. That felt like the government giving payback for anyone baseball fans which felt duped, fooled, cheated after revelations of widespread medicine use.

(After almost all, Bonds was the easiest target for followers’ anger. Fans have been angry for his breaking the solitary-season home-run record although, it was extensively suspected, he was on performance-enhancing drugs. They were angry for not coming clean, the way Jason Giambi did. They were angry for his typically being such a great ill-tempered spirit.)

While that rage hasn’t dissipated entirely, it’utes a dim ember compared to the actual inferno it had been for most of the last decade. Because of this, the case feels less a image of something larger and more exactly what it actually is — any perjury prosecution.

Obviously, perjury under pledge is a government crime — and prosecutors have each and every right to pursue Bonds for this. But prosecutions induced perjury grounds, with out more, don’t happen every day time. We’ve got to wonder whether this’s all worth it.

Plus, prosecutors safe place’t exactly assisted themselves along the way in which. As the above-linked ESPN story indicates, the indictment unsealed Thursday is the 4th version of the fees against Bonds.

The new document reflects the hit the government’s case required when Bonds’azines personal trainer, Greg Anderson, made clear his willingness to attend jail rather as compared to testify against Bonds.

Prosecutors on Thursday also removed from your indictment perjury costs that relied on dates found upon so-called doping calendars inside Anderson’s condominium that prosecutors aver show Bonds’ medication regimen.

U.Azines. District Judge Susan Illston ruled those documents inadmissible at trial because regarding Anderson’s refusal to authenticate them about the witness stand.

The hearing is planned for Friday on whether the panel should hear the secret tape documenting made between Bonds’ former business partner Steve Hoskins as well as Anderson allegedly speaking about Bonds’ steroid make use of. The judge has excused Bonds from attending the reading.

A ruling regarding Bonds would end up being yet another setback to the prosecution.

[ Via - blogs.wsj.com ]