Could this be strike three for prosecutors trying to put baseball slugger Barry Bonds behind bars for perjury? Frustrated federal prosecutors hope not.
By Bob Egelko
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors in the perjury case against former Giants star Barry Bonds have made their final written plea to a federal appeals court to allow potentially crucial evidence tying Bonds to drug tests that allegedly showed he used steroids.
In papers filed late Friday with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, prosecutors challenged a judge’s decision to bar evidence of three private drug tests in 2000 and 2001, so-called doping calendars and other records because Bonds’ trainer, who allegedly arranged the tests and kept the records, has refused to testify about them.
Unless Greg Anderson agrees to testify that the test samples came from Bonds and the records referred to him, the documents are inadmissible hearsay, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled in February. That means prosecutors can’t use them to prove Bonds lied when he testified to a federal grand jury in 2003 that he had never knowingly used steroids.
