Barry Bonds Indicted for perjury

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Barry Bonds Is Indicted for Perjury Tied to Drug Case

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Published: November 15, 2007

Barry Bonds, who holds two of baseball’s most cherished records, was indicted in San Francisco today on four counts of perjury in connection with his testimony about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Indictment: United States v. Barry Lamar Bonds

Whispers about Mr. Bonds’s record-setting performances — becoming the career home-run leader with 762 and the single-season record-holder with 73 home runs in 2001 — grew louder because of his links with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. The lab, also known as Balco, has been the subject of a federal investigation on illegal steroid use. Other athletes, including the former track star Marion Jones, have pleaded guilty in connection with the case. Ms. Jones recently returned the five medals she had won in the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.

But Mr. Bonds’s lawyer, Mike Rains, said: “I am utterly confident that this case will absolutely dissipate when the misconduct of the government comes to the forefront in this case. Barry is innocent of the charges, this is ridiculous.”

Mr. Bonds, 43, faces up faces up to five years in prison if he is convicted of the perjury charges and 10 years iif convicted of the obstruction of justice count.

A spokesman for Major League Baseball declined to comment. Mr. Bonds left the San Francisco Giant at the end of the 2007 season.

The United States attorney’s office for the Northern District of California, which announced the indictment, has been investigating whether Mr. Bonds perjured himself on Dec. 4, 2003, when he told the grand jury in San Francisco that he did not knowingly use performance enhancing drugs, despite drastic changes to his physique and documents with his with his name on them from 2001 to 2003 showing drug schedules.

When that grand jury expired without indicting Mr. Bonds, the case was sent over to a second grand jury, which focused on whether he had perjured himself before the first grand jury. Last July, with that grand jury set to expire, it was widely believed that Mr. Bonds would be indicted. But that grand jury also expired without an indictment and another grand jury was impaneled.

At the time Kevin Ryan, then United States attorney for the Northern District of California, said there were still “some unanswered questions” remaining in the case.

Lawyers involved with the case say there was a split within the United States attorney’s office about seeking an indictment last July in large part because Mr. Bonds’s former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, still remained in jail for refusing to testify about Mr. Bonds before the grand jury. They said Mr. Ryan decided not to go forward with an indictment at that time in the hopes that Mr. Anderson would eventually testify.

Today, Mr. Anderson was ordered released after spending about a year in jail, his lawyer and friend, Paula Canny, said in an interview. Ms. Canny, driving to jail to pick up Mr. Anderson this afternoon, said it was "mean and vindictive" for the government to have kept Anderson in jail when he was not needed to indict Mr. Bonds.

Mr. Bonds is scheduled to appear before a United States magistrate judge on Dec. 7 in San Francisco.

Victor Conte, founder of Balco, said he was “very surprised” at the indictment of Mr. Bonds. Mr. Conte has said Balco gave steroids to Mr. Anderson, but not to the baseball player himself.

As part of his own case, Mr. Conte said, he has reviewed 30, ooo pages of discovery and 2, 000 pages of sealed

documents and grand jury testimoney. "Based on my understanding of what they have, it doesn`t make a lot of sense

to me," he said in a telephone interview today.

Duff Wilson contributed reporting,

New York Times