Legal•Info

Barry Bonds’ Conviction Upheld

Posted: Monday, September 30th, 2013 at 11:54 am

On Friday September 13, 2013, Barry Bonds’ conviction of obstruction of justice was upheld in appeals court, with a jury ruling unanimously. Bonds, formerly of the Giants, was once known as the all-time and single-season home run record holder. Now he is also known as a child celebrity baseball player guilty of perjury in front of a grand jury.

A jury of 8 women and 4 men unanimously determined Bonds had lied to the grand jury about steroid use during his time in court in 2003.

Not only was the testimony considered by the jury to be untrue, it was labeled as misleading, evasive, and Bonds’ was openly called capable of misleading investigators and jurors alike.

The appeal came after Bonds’ was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest, $4000 in fines, 250 hours of community service, and two years probation in December of 2011. Bonds’ appeal didn’t go quite as he would have liked. The honorable judge Mary M. Schroeder, on behalf of a 3 judge panel, ruled that the run-on, rambling response to a question which referred to whether or not Bonds’ trainer, Greg Anderson, had ever given Bonds [drugs] that should have to be injected via syringe, was evasive to say the least.

Bonds’ argument was that his run on response, which brought up his childhood celebrity status- thanks to his celebrity father- should be accepted as it was a factual statement, not fictional, and his conviction should be reversed on those grounds. The jury did not feel the same way, as the answer provided to the grand jury in response to the steroid use questioning, though factual, evaded the line of questioning completely.

Judge Schroeder felt that not only did the answer evade the purpose of the questioning, she said it was meant to distract the attention of the grand jury from matters at hand.

Barry Bonds retired with 762 home runs. Less than two months after his final game in 2007, he was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. Bonds is now 49 years of age.

 

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