Barry Bonds lawyers move to dismiss charges

The SF Chronicle says Barry Bonds's lawyers want charges dismissed.

Barry Bonds' legal team took a second run Monday at paring back the indictment facing the former Giants' slugger, who is accused of lying to a federal grand jury about whether he used steroids.

In documents filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Bonds' lawyers asked Judge Susan Illston to dismiss 10 of the 15 charges of perjury and obstruction of justice contained in an indictment handed up in May.

Seven charges should be dismissed because the prosecutors asked Bonds "fundamentally ambiguous" questions when he testified before the grand jury that investigated the BALCO steroid case, wrote lawyers Dennis Riordan and Donald Horgan. The lawyers claimed other defects in three other charges.

A hearing on the matter is set for Oct. 24. If Bonds prevails, he would go to trial in March on five charges of perjury. If convicted of perjury and obstruction, he faces a maximum sentence of about 24 to 30 months in prison, legal experts say.

The filing marked the second time that Bonds' lawyers have asked the judge to toss parts of the indictment.

And why not get charges dismissed on procedure?   The trial is set for next spring.  Sounds like a year more of legal wrangling is about to ensue.

...Bonds' lawyers objected again, this time arguing that the questions the prosecutors had posed to the former Giants star often were impermissibly vague and confusing.

For example, Bonds was accused of perjury for answering "no" when asked whether he had been taking "anything like" steroids in 2000. That count should be stricken, the lawyers wrote, because the question "utterly fails to reasonably identify what substances can be deemed 'anything like' steroids."

 

 

nds