Judge Tosses Key Evidence Against Bonds!

[huge285]

Judge Tosses Key Evidence Against Bonds

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: February 20, 2009

The judge presiding over Barry Bonds’s perjury case dealt prosecutors a significant setback late Thursday, ruling that the government cannot use bonds190.jpgseveral pieces of key evidence — including documents that tied Bonds to positive drug tests and doping calendars — at his trial, which is scheduled to begin next month.

United States District Judge Susan Illston said that without the testimony of Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds’s former trainer, the evidence could not be authenticated and directly tied to Bonds. Anderson spent a year in prison for refusing to cooperate with the government’s investigation. Since his release in November 2007, Anderson has continued to refuse to testify about substances the government said he gave Bonds.

The documents that tied Bonds to positive drug tests were seized from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative and, according to federal investigators, show that Bonds had steroids in his urine in 2000 and 2001. The doping calendars were seized at Anderson’s home, and the prosecutors said they were used to monitor Bonds’s use of human growth hormone and designer steroids that Balco provided to its athletes.
Illston also said that calendars from other athletes — including Jason Giambi and his brother, Jeremy — that were seized at Anderson’s home could not be presented as evidence. She did not say whether the athletes could testify about the substances they received from Anderson.
Bonds is scheduled to go on trial March 2 on charges he made false statements before a grand jury investigating Balco in 2003, saying he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.

How prosecutors will proceed from here remains to be seen. The government may appeal the judge’s decision, which would delay the trial several months. A delay, however, could give prosecutors a chance to try to pressure Anderson to testify. The government has pressured Anderson by threatening his wife, Nicole Gestas, and mother-in-law on charges related to their finances.

An official for the United States attorney’s office for the Northern District of California declined comment on the matter.

Illston did side with the government on a few issues. She ruled that prosecutors could play a significant portion of a secretly taped conversation between Bonds’s former business manager, Steve Hoskins, and Anderson. The government said that Hoskins recorded the conversation in March 2003 in the San Francisco Giants’ locker room. On the tape, according to the government, Anderson said the substances Bonds was using were undetectable and that he injected him in different areas to prevent infections.

The judge, however, excluded the part of the tape in which Anderson said that he had inside information about when players would be tested under Major League Baseball’s drug-testing program that year. Anderson claimed to know at least a week in advance before players were tested that year.
Bonds’s sample from baseball did not test positive for steroids that year under baseball’s drug testing program. However, the test was later seized by federal authorities. When the authorities retested it, it showed the presence of the designer steroid THG, known as the “clear,” the fertility drug clomid and a form of testosterone not naturally produced by the body. The government will be permitted to present that test as evidence.
Illston also said the government would be permitted to call Dr. Larry Bowers, an expert on the use of performance-enhancing drugs, to testify about the side effects of anabolic steroids.

In a separate ruling, Illston asked the government and the defense to come up with a date to bring Anderson before her to see if he will testify at the trial. At a hearing on Tuesday, Illston said she wanted both sides to know whether he will testify before opening arguments are made.

[danger]

they should throw it all out!

[flexingtonsteele]

Good,

Im tired of this Barry Bonds witch hunt........He was just doing what everybody else was.

Hell, when he was hitting 73 bombs in a season there was an ass in every seat and attendance and ratings for baseball has been its best ever since.

Bonds should be thanked, he took a game which was in the toilet and with the help of a lil bit of aas brought it back to prominence.

[.DP]

^^^ agreed.

Steroids saved baseball.

[huge285]

Judge bars use of drug tests in Bonds trial

By PAUL ELIAS – 1 hour ago
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge barred prosecutors on Thursday from showing jurors three positive steroid tests and other key evidence in Barry Bonds' trial next month.
The decision is a setback for the government in its five-year pursuit of Bonds, who has pleaded not guilty to lying to a grand jury on Dec. 4, 2003, when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the test results — urine samples that are positive for steroids — are inadmissible because prosecutors can't 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. Illston said Feb. 5 she was leaning toward that ruling.
Prosecutors couldn't immediately be reached to determine whether they planned an appeal, which would delay the start of the scheduled March 2 trial.
Prosecutors allege Anderson collected the urine samples and delivered them for testing to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.
Anderson's attorney said the trainer will refuse to testify at Bonds' trial even though he's likely to be sent to jail for contempt of court.
He already served a year in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Bonds and his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
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.
But the judge said that without Anderson's testimony, the tests could not be introduced at Bonds' trial, scheduled to start March 2. Anderson is alleged to have delivered Bonds' blood samples to BALCO after the slugger's personal surgeon, Dr. Arthur Ting, drew the samples.
Prosecutors said the three key tests show positive results in 2000 and 2001 for the steroids nandrolone and methenolone. The samples themselves do not identify the source, but prosecutors said business records seized in the BALCO raid tie Bonds to the positive tests.
Prosecutors had hoped to present the positive tests to the jury by having BALCO's former vice president, James Valente, testify that when Anderson handed him the urine samples, the trainer said they belonged to Bonds.
But the judge noted that Valente told a grand jury he changed a label on one of the tests from "Bonds" to "Anderson" at the trainer's request, making the lab's testing suspect.
"Valente testified before the grand jury that on at least one occasion, he mislabeled a sample," the judge wrote. "In light of this evidence that on occasion BALCO employees tampered with the labels of samples, the court cannot find that the requisite guarantees of trustworthiness are present in this case."
Prosecutors still have a fourth test showing Bonds used steroids that they will be allowed to show a jury. In 2003, Major League Baseball tested all of its players for steroid use. The results of those tests were to remain confidential and were to be used only to determine if MLB had a drug problem that needed to be addressed.
The lab that MLB hired to conduct its testing found that Bonds tested negative for steroid use. But in 2004, federal agents seized Bonds' urine sample and had it retested for the drug THG, which they said turned up positive.
Bonds' lead attorney, Allen Ruby, didn't return a telephone call late Thursday night. But other attorneys on Bonds' legal team have said that the MLB positive test jibes with the player's grand jury testimony that he took substances he later determined were designer steroids supplied by his trainer without explanation.
The ruling wasn't a complete loss for prosecutors. The judge said that they could play parts of a recording 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.
In that conversation, Anderson discusses how he is helping Bonds' avoid infections by injecting him in different parts of his buttocks rather than in one spot.
Bonds testified before the grand jury that no one but his doctor ever injected him.
In the recording, it also appears as if Anderson is boasting about injecting Bonds with a steroid designed to evade detection at the time.
"But the whole thing is," Anderson said, according to a government transcript, "everything that I've been doing at this point, it's all undetectable."
The judge barred prosecutors from playing the portion of the recording where Anderson appears to discuss his strategy for helping Bonds beat MLB's drug testing program in 2003.
"The government has not established that it was a criminal or civil offense in 2003 to help athletes evade detection by professional sports associations," the judge ruled.
Finally, the judge said she will allow Larry Bowers, the medical director for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, to testify about side effects associated with use of performance-enhancing drugs. Bowers submitted a statement of his expected testimony that said side effects include "an increase in the size of one's head or skull, jaw, hands and fingers, and feet and toes, as well as improved eyesight."

[Aaron Singerman]

If he wasn't such an asshole he wouldn't be such a large target.

[Canuck_Muscle]

One up for Bonds. Screw the legal system!

[Sandpig]

If he wasn't such an asshole he wouldn't be such a large target.

That's for sure. And Clemens is just as bad.

[M. Vince Goodrum]

I do find it disturbing that they are threatening his wife and mother in law with jail time as well. They definitely have nothing to do with the case and should not be used as pawns in this chess game.

[DECABEATZ]

Fuck the system go bonds goverment spending hundreds of thousands of dollars maby millions for this. Hey the last time i checked we were in the worst financial situation since 1929 the money should be put back into the economy. I swear fucking bush and his antics i wish he would get hit with a golfball and die. Unemployed since 10-08

[Mike the Ripper]

Fuck the system go bonds goverment spending hundreds of thousands of dollars maby millions for this. Hey the last time i checked we were in the worst financial situation since 1929 the money should be put back into the economy. I swear fucking bush and his antics i wish he would get hit with a golfball and die. Unemployed since 10-08

Really??? I couldn't imagine why.

[DECABEATZ]

the economy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Theres your answer

[DECABEATZ]

And the people that have jobs cherish them and be gratefull.

[Koubs]

This just keeps getting more and more messy and complex... Bonds' legacy is tarnished forever no matter what the outcome... Too bad he stands out so much because he's the greatest player ever... No one will ever know how many other player used and were never caught... Just because they're not as good doesn't mean they didn't cheat........

[A.Carter]

I'd like to know how much $$ has already been spent on this shitt??????????..