8:16 AM: Former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds has arrived at the federal courthouse where his trial on perjury charges begins today, seven years after he told a grand jury he never knowingly took steroids.
Jury selection for his trial is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston at the Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco.
The selection of the 12 jurors and four alternates will begin with the questioning of an initial pool of 50 prospective jurors.
The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Bonds, 46, is accused of four counts of false statements and one count of obstruction of justice in testimony before a federal grand jury on Dec. 4, 2003.
The grand jury was investigating the sale of performance-enhancing drugs by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO.
The former San Francisco Giants outfielder set Major League Baseball’s career home-run record of 762 during his last season with the team in 2007. He hit the single-season record of 73 in 2001.
Bonds is the last of 11 defendants who were charged in federal court in San Francisco with either illegal drug distribution or lying in connection with BALCO probe.
Eight defendants – including two BALCO officials, a chemist and Bonds’ trainer, Greg Anderson – pleaded guilty to various charges.
Two others – cycling champion Tammy Thomas and Olympic track coach Trevor Graham – went to trial in Illston’s court and were separately convicted of lying to investigators or the grand jury.
The five counts against Bonds each carry a theoretical maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if he is convicted. But on similar charges, Thomas and Graham were sentenced to six months and one year of home confinement, respectively.
7:28 AM: More than seven years after Barry Bonds told a grand jury he never knowingly took steroids, the home-run champion is due to go on trial in federal court in San Francisco Monday on perjury charges.
Bonds, 46, is accused of four counts of false statements and one count of obstruction of justice in Dec. 4, 2003, testimony before a federal grand jury investigating sports drug sales by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO.
His trial in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston begins Monday morning with jury selection and is expected to last three or four weeks.
The former San Francisco Giants outfielder set Major League Baseball’s career home-run record of 762 during his last season with the team in 2007. He hit the single-season record of 73 in 2001.
Bonds is the last of 11 defendants who were charged in federal court in San Francisco with either illegal drug distribution or lying in connection with BALCO probe.
Eight defendants – including two BALCO officials, a chemist and Bonds’ trainer, Greg Anderson – pleaded guilty to various charges.
Two others, cycling champion Tammy Thomas and Olympic track coach Trevor Graham, went to trial in Illston’s court and were separately convicted of lying to investigators or the grand jury.
The five counts against Bonds each carry a theoretical maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if he is convicted. But on similar charges, Thomas and Graham were sentenced, respectively, to six months and one year of home confinement.
Bonds’ four alleged lies to the grand jury were statements that he never knowingly took steroids from Anderson; never was injected by him; never knowingly took human growth hormone from him; and never took anything other than vitamins from him before 2003.
When asked, “Did you ever take any steroids that he gave you?”
Bonds answered, “Not that I know of,” according to the indictment.
The fifth count accuses Bonds of obstructing justice by giving testimony that was allegedly “intentionally evasive, false and misleading” in those and other statements.
The current charges, issued in February, are the fourth version of an indictment originally filed by a federal grand jury on Nov. 15, 2007.
Federal prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office had hoped Anderson would be a key witness against Bonds.
But Anderson, a childhood friend of Bonds, has told Illston he will refuse to testify. The trainer is due to appear before the judge Tuesday morning to say whether he will continue to refuse to take the stand. Prosecutors have asked Illston to order him imprisoned for contempt of court for the duration of the trail if he declines to testify.
Without Anderson’s testimony, prosecutors are planning an array of other evidence to prove their allegation that Bonds had in fact taken steroids and therefore lied in his 2003 statements.
The evidence will include testimony from six baseball players who are slated to tell the jury that Anderson gave them performance-enhancing drugs, according to a prosecution witness list.
Illston has ruled that prosecutors can use that testimony to try to show that Anderson had access to such drugs, had a plan for distributing them, and told the players what the drugs were.
But she has said that prosecutors can’t argue that the alleged fact that Anderson gave drugs to other athletes therefore shows that he gave them to Bonds as well.
An ex-girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, is due to testify about physical changes in Bonds’ body after he allegedly began taking steroids in the late 1990s.
Prosecutors also want to play a tape of a secretly recorded conversation between Anderson and Bonds’ former business manager, Steve Hoskins, at the San Francisco Giants clubhouse in the spring of 2003.
In the tape, Anderson refers to having given injections to a person named “Barry” and to the use of an “undetectable” material that “worked at the Olympics.”
Illston has tentatively ruled the tape can be used as evidence, but only if prosecutors first prove that the substances mentioned by Anderson were illegal at the time periods referred to by the trainer.
The selection of the 12 jurors and four alternates will begin with the questioning of an initial pool of 50 prospective jurors in Illston’s Federal Building courtroom.
The candidates have already filled out an 18-page questionnaire with queries such as whether they know any of the lawyers or witnesses in the case; whether they know of Congressional hearings on the steroid use by Major League Baseball players; and whether they have attended a Giants game in the past five years.
The aim is to get a group of 36 potential jurors after candidates who are unable to serve have been dismissed, either because they may be biased in favor of one side or the other, or for other reasons.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will then take turns exercising so-called peremptory challenges, in which they can dismiss jury candidates without giving a reason.
Under court rules, prosecutors can use peremptory challenges to dismiss a total of eight potential regular jurors and alternates, while the defense can dismiss 12.
That part of the process is done silently, and when it is over, the court will be left with 12 jurors and four alternates. The jurors will be identified only by number and not by name.
If the selection goes quickly and smoothly, opening statements could begin as early as Tuesday morning.
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
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