From NYT:Barry Bonds Is Indicted for Perjury Tied to Drug Case Barry Bonds, who holds both of Major League Baseball’s most cherished home-run records, was indicted today on four counts of perjury in connection with his testimony about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, his lawyer said.
He was also indicted on one count of obstruction of justice.
Whispers about Mr. Bonds’s record-setting performances — becoming the career home-run leader with 762 this past season and the single-season record-holder with 73 home runs in 2001 — grew louder because of his links with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. The lab, also known as Balco, has been the subject of a four-year federal investigation on illegal steroid use. Other athletes, including Olympian Marion Jones, have pleaded guilty in connection with the case.
But Mr. Bonds’s lawyer, Mike Rains, said: “I am utterly confident that this case will absolutely dissipate when the misconduct of the government comes to the forefront in this case. Barry is innocent of the charges, this is ridiculous.â€
Mr. Bonds, 43, faces up to five years in prison if he is convicted of the perjury charges and 10 years if convicted of the obstruction of justice count.
A spokesman for Major League Baseball declined to comment. Mr. Bonds left the San Francisco Giant at the end of the 2007 season.
The United States attorney’s office for the Northern District of California has been investigating whether Mr. Bonds perjured himself in December 2003 when he told a grand jury in San Francisco that he did not knowingly use performance enhancing drugs, despite drastic changes to his physique and documents with his name on them from 2001 to 2003 showing drug schedules.
When that grand jury expired without indicting Mr. Bonds, the case was sent over to a second grand jury, which focused on whether he had perjured himself before the first grand jury. Last July, with that grand jury set to expire, it was widely believed that Mr. Bonds would be indicted. But that grand jury also expired without an indictment and another grand jury was impaneled.
At the time Kevin Ryan, then United States attorney for the Northern District of California, said there were still “some unanswered questions†remaining in the case.
Lawyers involved with the case say there was a split within the United States attorney’s office about seeking an indictment last July in large part because Mr. Bonds’s former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, still remained in jail and that Mr. Ryan decided not to go forward with an indictment in the hopes that Mr. Anderson would eventually testify.
Mr. Bonds is scheduled to appear before a United States magistrate judge on Dec. 7 in San Francisco.
Victor Conte, founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, which supplied steroids to some elite athletes, said he was “very surprised†at the indictment of Mr. Bonds. Mr. Conte has said Balco gave steroids to Mr. Anderson, who spent much of the past year in jail for refusing to testify about Mr. Bonds, but not to the baseball player himself.
As part of his own case, Mr. Conte said, he has reviewed 30,000 pages of discovery and 2,000 pages of sealed documents and grand jury testimony. “Based on my understanding of what they have, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,†Mr. Conte said in a telephone interview today.
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After a summer of pistol whipping and dog hanging, this is anticlimactic.
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