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New Sports Illustrated Column on Greg Anderson Going Back to Prison for Barry Bonds

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

I have a new SI column on Barry Bonds and yesterday's ruling that Greg Anderson -- the former trainer and incredibly/almost unbelievably loyal friend of Bonds -- will be going back to prison.

Here's an excerpt:

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Anderson is already familiar with the consequences of disregarding a court order. He spent a year in prison between 2006 and 2007 for refusing to testify in related proceedings against Bonds. Assuming Anderson does not have a change of heart -- and his lawyer, Mark Geragos insists that he won't -- he could spend as much as a month in this prison this time around. While the penalty may seem duplicative and unnecessary, since Anderson has already spent considerable time in prison for Bonds and it appears that additional prison time will not change his thinking, Judge Illston does not want to reward Anderson for choosing his loyalty to Bonds over his civic obligation to a court.

Even without Anderson's live cooperation, prosecutors can still use Anderson's voice to implicate Bonds. In a taped conversation of Anderson and Bonds' former business partner, Steve Hoskins, from 2003, Anderson boasts that he provided Bonds with "the Clear" (tetrahydrogestrinone or THT). Also in the conversation, Hoskins characterizes Bonds as "taking those shots." . . . .

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Bonds' attorneys will also have their work cut out for them in explaining why their client would decline an offer of immunity when appearing before the grand jury. Bonds had to agree to testify truthfully about drugs; he refused. Judge Illston ruled that such a piece of evidence is admissible. During the trial, Bonds' attorneys will probably reason that their client did not need immunity since, in their view, he was already telling the truth when stating he did not use steroids. A jury may conclude, however, that Bonds was worried more about how accepting the immunity offer would have harmed his baseball legacy than about how declining the offer would have harmed his legal standing.

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Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on March 02, 2011 (boomark / email).