2:57 PM:Lawyers for Barry Bonds told the federal judge presiding over the home-run champion’s perjury trial in San Francisco today that they may call Bonds to testify in his own defense on Wednesday.
Defense attorney Allen Ruby said the former San Francisco Giants slugger’s lawyers will decide overnight whether to call Bonds and any of a handful of other witnesses to the stand.
“Whether we’ll call all or none of those people is something we’ll decide tonight,” Ruby said.
The announcement came after the prosecution rested its case early this afternoon. The trial is now in its third week.
Illston dismissed the jurors for the rest of the day and will hear four defense motions beginning at 3 p.m.
The motions – filed this afternoon after the prosecution completed its case – include a request for a directed verdict of acquittal as well as three motions to strike various portions of previously presented prosecution evidence.
Ruby said that when the jury returns at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the defense will present brief testimony by an FBI agent and a U.S. Internal Revenue Service agent who worked on the case.
He said the other witnesses the defense is considering are Bonds; Harvey Shields, Bonds’ stretching trainer; and Laura Enos, who worked as a business lawyer for Bonds.
Bonds, 46, is accused of lying to a federal grand jury in 2003 when he said he never knowingly received steroids or human growth hormone from his weights trainer, Greg Anderson.
The panel was investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO.
Closing statements in the case could take place as soon as Thursday, if the defense witnesses complete testimony on Wednesday.
Earlier today, Illston refused to allow prosecutors to present evidence of a 15-minute tape of a secretly recorded conversation between Bonds’ former business associate, Steve Hoskins, and his orthopedic surgeon, Arthur Ting.
Hoskins secretly recorded the tape during a meeting with Ting shortly after federal agents in the drug probe raided BALCO’s office in Burlingame on Sept. 3, 2003.
Illston said the tape was barely intelligible and contained inadmissible hearsay discussion by Hoskins of news reports of the BALCO raid.
Hoskins, a prosecution witness, worked with Bonds in a sports memorabilia business until Bonds fired him in the spring of 2003 amid allegations that Hoskins stole from him and forged his name.
Prosecutors had said the tape – which Hoskins had misplaced but said he found in a storage locker on Sunday – would support his testimony that he had discussed Bonds and steroids with Ting. Hoskins told the jury that he had 50 conversations with Ting about Bonds and drugs, but Ting later contradicted that, testifying that he had had only one conversation with Hoskins in 1999 about steroids in general.
Prosecutors’ final witness was drug-testing expert Don Catlin, the founder and former director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory.
Catlin told the jury that a urine sample provided by Bonds in 2003 tested positive for a designer steroid known as THG when it was re-examined in 2006.
The sample provided by Bonds in 2003 was for a Major League Baseball testing program that was supposed to be anonymous. When initially tested, it did not show THG because the steroid was not detectable at the time.
But the sample was not destroyed, and federal investigators in the perjury case seized it in 2004 and had it retested at the UCLA laboratory in 2006.
Bonds admitted to the grand jury in 2003 that he had taken “the clear,” but said he thought it was flaxseed oil and did not know it was a steroid.
Catlin also told the jury that the 2006 test detected the presence of clomiphene, a non-steroid chemical that is used as a fertility drug for women. Another expert testified earlier in the trial that it is sometimes employed by male athletes to restore the natural production of testosterone after they have taken steroids.
Also today, the jury heard a reading of sections of Bonds’ testimony before the grand jury on Dec. 4, 2003. The testimony was previously unsealed by Illston and made public in 2008.
Bonds is charged with one count of obstructing justice and four counts of making false statements in that testimony.
The four alleged lies were his statements that he never knowing took steroids from Anderson; never knowingly received human growth hormone from him; never received anything other than vitamins from him before the 2003 season; and never was injected by him.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
11:58 PM: A drug expert testified at the perjury trial of Barry Bonds in federal court in San Francisco today that a urine sample provided by the home-run champion in 2003 tested positive for a designer steroid in 2006.
Don Catlin, the founder and former director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, told the jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston that the sample showed the presence of THG.
The scientific name for the substance is tetrahydrogestrinone. It has also been called “the clear.”
Bonds, 46, is on trial on charges of lying to a federal grand jury when he testified in December 2003 that he never knowingly received anabolic steroids or human growth hormone from his trainer, Greg Anderson.
The sample provided by Bonds in 2003 was for a Major League Baseball testing program that was supposed to be anonymous. When initially tested, it did not show THG because the steroid was not detectable at the time.
But the sample was not destroyed, and federal investigators in the perjury case seized it in 2004 and had it retested at the UCLA laboratory in 2006.
Bonds admitted to the grand jury in 2003 that he had taken “the clear,” but said he thought it was flaxseed oil and did not know it was a steroid.
Catlin also told the jury that the 2006 test detected the presence of clomiphene, a non-steroid chemical that is used as a fertility drug for women. Another expert testified earlier in the trial that it is sometimes employed by male athletes to restore the natural production of testosterone after they have taken steroids.
Catlin’s testimony brought the prosecution side of the case close to an end.
The final piece of prosecution evidence, planned for late morning, was a reading of portions of Bonds’ 2003 grand jury testimony.
Bonds is accused of making a total of four false statements and obstructing justice in that testimony.
Defense attorneys have not said how many, if any, witnesses they plan to call. The trial is in its third week.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
Want more news, sent to your inbox every day? Then how about subscribing to our email newsletter? Here’s why we think you should. Come on, give it a try.
