Legal News

Hot Docs Unsealed in Bonds Steroids Case

By Dan Slater

The Bonds steroid controversy is back in full-swing. Today, a federal judge unsealed hundreds of pages of court documents at the heart of the government’s criminal case against Bonds, including positive drug tests that prosecutors linked to the home run king. Here’s an early story from the Journal’s Justin Scheck, which contains links to the voluminous filings.

The former San Francisco Giant is charged with lying to a grand jury. Bonds, who is scheduled to stand trial next month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, told a grand jury investigating a Bay Area steroid ring in 2003 that he had never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs, prosecutors say.

The evidence unsealed Wednesday makes up much of the government’s attempt to prove otherwise. It includes records of tests that purportedly show anabolic steroids in Bonds’s blood in 2000 and 2001, as well as calendars and a taped phone call in which Bonds’s trainer allegedly discusses injecting Bonds.

Bonds’s attorneys have fought to keep the evidence private. The records unsealed Wednesday show that they plan to contest whether much of the evidence is admissible. The WSJ could not immediately reach Bond’s defense lawyer, Allen Ruby, for comment.

The documents, reports the AP, include a list of current and former major leaguers, including Jason Giambi, who are scheduled to testify for the government at Bonds’s trial next month.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 04, 2009 (boomark / email).