Legal News

Bonds Trial Opens: ?Expect a Heavyweight Fight?

By Ashby Jones

The perjury trial of home-run king Barry Bonds starts on Monday after what feels like a 10-year run-up. (Actually, it’s only been eight: Bonds made the statements at issue in 2003.)

Back then, Bonds testified he never knowingly took steroids, never accepted human growth hormone from a personal trainer and never allowed anyone other than medical personnel to give him injections.

The government contends those statements are false. If convicted,  Bonds could face five years or more in federal prison. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for the SF Chroncle story.

Bonds’s case hinges on whether prosecutors can prove the former San Francisco Giants slugger took steroids and that he knew what they were when he was taking them.

One looming challenge for the governement: some of the potentially most compelling evidence against Bonds might potentially come from Bonds’s trainer and childhood friend, Greg Anderson, who had elected to go to jail rather than testify against Bonds.

Still, the trial promises some fireworks.Various former professional baseball players are expected to testify about steroid use and, according to a court filing, a former girlfriend of Mr. Bonds is expected to talk about physical changes to Bonds’s anatomy during the time prosecutors say he used steroids.

The NYT story focuses largely on the lawyers in the case. For Bonds: they’re a heavy-hitting bunch: Skadden’s Allen Ruby, Cris Arguedas and Dennis Riordan. All have significant experience in high-profile defense trials.

"Is the prosecution overmatched?" said Rory Little, a professor at the U.C. Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and a former federal prosecutor, to the NYT.  "The bottom line is yeah, they are overmatched in the sense of how much money and how much celebrity trial experience they have.

"But they are not overmatched in two areas: their familiarity with the criminal justice system and the evidence. You can fool a jury for one day, but you can't fool them for two weeks if the other side has the evidence to prove its case."

In the words of the SF Chron: “Expect a heavyweight fight.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 21, 2011 (boomark / email).