Court upholds Bonds' obstruction conviction
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Former San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds was properly convicted of obstruction of justice by trying to mislead a grand jury about his knowledge of his trainer's distribution of steroids, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Baseball's all-time home run leader was convicted in 2011 of giving misleading testimony to a federal grand jury that was looking into steroid distribution by a Burlingame laboratory and Bonds' trainer and childhood friend, Greg Anderson.
When a prosecutor asked Bonds before the grand jury in 2003 whether Anderson had ever given him drugs he could inject on his own, the ballplayer launched into a discussion of their friendship and his own "celebrity" childhood as the son of Giants outfielder Bobby Bonds. He never gave a direct answer, and the jury at his federal trial concluded that his response had been aimed at delaying and impeding the investigation.
Bonds' attorneys said prosecutors had later asked the same question and that Bonds had flatly denied, three times, that Anderson ever gave him self-injectable drugs. The lawyers told the appeals court that Bonds' delivery of a "truthful, albeit rambling and irrelevant, statement" to the grand jury was not a crime.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Court-upholds-Bonds-obstruction-conviction-4811861.php
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