Judge Susan Illston barred federal prosecutors from introducing 3 positive blood tests in Barry Bonds perjury trial to begin later this year. The AP reports this story. (New York Times story here)
Evidence in court must adhere to rules unique to courtrooms, and good for that. However, the judge cannot banish those positive tests from the minds of baseball fans and Hall of Fame voters, where Barry Bonds really lives...tainted forever. (BTW Bonds is looking pretty old in the photo)
A federal judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors cannot show jurors
three positive steroid tests and other key evidence in the slugger's
trial next month.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the urine samples that tested positive for steroids are inadmissible because prosecutors cannot prove conclusively that they belong to Bonds. The judge also barred prosecutors from showing jurors so-called doping calendars that Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, allegedly maintained for the slugger.
The judge said prosecutors need direct testimony from Anderson to introduce such evidence. Anderson's attorney said the trainer will refuse to testify at Bonds' trial even though he is likely to be sent to prison on contempt of court charges.
However the judge did not bar us from continuing the story after the jump...
One wonders why Greg Anderson will go to the grave to defend Bonds, who by all accounts wasn't exactly a sugar daddy to his trainer?
Prosecutors could not immediately be reached to determine whether they planned an appeal, which would delay the start of the scheduled March 2 trial.
Bonds has pleaded not guilty to lying to a grand jury on Dec. 4, 2003 when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.
Prosecutors allege Anderson collected the urine samples and delivered them for testing to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.
During a September 2003 raid, federal investigators seized the positive test results that they allege belong to Bonds along with 21 other blood and urine samples that tested negative.
Prosecutors wanted to use all the tests to show that Bonds was a knowledgeable steroids consumer because he was a frequent customer of BALCO, the center of a massive sports doping ring.
Prosecutors said the three key tests show positive results in 2000 and 2001 for the steroids nandrolone and methenolone, the same steroids Alex Rodriguez said he believed he took for three years ending in 2003. The samples themselves do not identify the source, but prosecutors said business records seized in the BALCO raid tie Bonds to the positive tests.
Not all is lost:
The ruling was not a complete loss for prosecutors. The judge said that they could play parts of a recording that Bonds' former personal assistant, Steve Hoskins, secretly made of a conversation he had with Anderson in front of the slugger's locker in San Francisco in March 2003.
How rich. So (I rhetorically ask) are you neutral in this case...as in, let us see what happens and what the evidence shows? Nah, that's no fun. After all, you're an academic and clearly know more than the rest of us. Spare no expense and use whatever investigative techniques are necessary. We must bring down The Evil One.
Dr Gaffney, most of us know that Bonds took substances deemed illegal at the time, subsequently banned, etc. It's not that we (if you allow me to speak widely) don't care, although that's true of some, it's that we don't have a personal stake in destroying a freaking professional baseball player because we don't like him. Many can rightly question why a drug (or even a placebo) can make a baseball player feel like he's at his peak isn't excactly the worst thing in sports. What? Hell, if Curt Shilling can be lauded for doping up his ankle and pitching the game of his life or our heroes of yore remain so even thought many were doped up on speed all the time, is it acceptable to you that Bonds (or Giambi or Bart Miadich, etc) isn't such an anomaly? This issue is nuanced; hell, the EFFECTS are even debated. You know this, which is why you'll probably delete my comment again.
Posted by: KMD | 02/20/2009 at 11:56
Why would we delete your comment? Just because you insult us with demeaning remarks...that's not grounds for deletion.
I would think everyone should be impartial in the trial. It serves no one to either distort the evidence or to convict someone who isn't guilty because of bad press.
We hope that readers recognize the difference between a therapeutic intervention (ala Schilling) and doping or cheating allegedly by certain baseball stars.
We have the feeling that we will all be sick of this trial in a few short weeks...
thanks for the comment
Posted by: Steroid Nation | 02/20/2009 at 13:55
I think the Schilling comment is very apropos. To call his case a "therapeutic intervention" - who decides that to be the case? How do we know the truth? The answer is that we, as outsiders, have a right to skepticism if warranted. The level of illegal, unethical, dangerous performance-enhancing medical "intervention" is at least as high as the stakes were for Red Sox Nation at the time. The level of doctoring is incredibly important in the outcome of elite sports events, and the team won't win if the players aren't playing. With the money, the pressure, the self-selected willingness to stitch the stars up and get them back, using whatever means, to the field, elite sports medicine is as horribly tainted as Wall Street. Check out what Dave Meggysey was writing 35 years ago, use a little systemic logic, and there you have it, as Eddie Rabbit sang: "Suspicions"...
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