Friday, December 16, 2011

Barry Bonds Gets 30 Days House Arrest, Appeal Pending In Steroid Case!

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Via CNN:

Baseball legend Barry Bonds was sentenced Friday to 30 days of house arrest for an obstruction of justice conviction in connection with his 2003 testimony to a federal grand jury investigating pro athletes' illegal steroids use.

But the sentence, which also includes two years of probation and a $4,000 fine, will be put on hold pending an appeal.

The sentencing came in a San Francisco federal courtroom near the ballpark where he broke Hank Aaron's major league home run record in 2007. Federal prosecutors had wanted Bonds, 47, to serve 15 months in prison, according to a sentencing memo filed in court earlier this month.

Jurors who found Bonds guilty in April said he was evasive in his December 2003 testimony, which was part of the BALCO investigation that targeted employees of a California drug testing laboratory and Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson.

The testimony that led to Bonds' conviction came when a grand jury prosecutor asked him whether Anderson ever gave him "anything that required a syringe to inject yourself with."

Bonds told the grand jury that only his personal doctors "ever touch me," and he then veered off the subject to say he never talked baseball with Anderson. In closing arguments two weeks ago, a federal prosecutor said Bonds lied to the grand jury because he knew the truth about his steroids use would "tinge his accomplishments" and hurt his baseball career. Defense lawyers had argued that Bond' thought the creams and ointments Anderson was giving him were made of flaxseed oils.


Via L.A. Times:

Barry Bonds' home-confinement-and-probation sentence, handed down for his obstruction-of-justice conviction, was stayed by the judge in the case, pending an appeal by baseball's home run king.

Bonds, 47, was sentenced Friday to two years' probation, 250 hours of community service, 30 days of home confinement, and was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine. But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston immediately stayed the sentence.

The former San Francisco Giants star was convicted last April of one count of obstruction of justice for giving evasive testimony to a federal grand jury eight years ago during an investigation of doping in sports.

Bonds was charged with several counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying during the grand jury's probe of the Burlingame, Calif.-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, which sold banned substances to athletes.

The trial jury deadlocked on the perjury charges.

Federal sentencing guidelines recommend 15 to 21 months in prison for obstruction, but probation officials told Illston that Bonds' offense warranted much less.

Probation officials cited Bonds' history of charitable and civic works -- works that Bonds' attorneys said he kept private even though they would have enhanced his reputation.

Prosecutors countered that Bonds deserved 15 months in prison for his "pervasive efforts to testify falsely, to mislead the grand jury, to dodge questions, and to simply refuse to answer questions in the grand jury."

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