Bonds' San Francisco Federal Perjury Trial

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright March 25, 2011
All Rights Reserved.                                         

             Facing trial for perjury and obstruction of justice in San Francisco U.S. District Court, Major League Baseball’s single season and lifetime home run king former San Francisco Giant slugger Barry Bonds stood before 12 jurors weighing his fate.  Bonds emphatically denied in 2003 to a federal grand jury that he “knowingly used” steroids.  Despite testimony from Bonds’ trainers and former players, Barry denied he had ever “knowingly” used steroids, insisting he thought he was using “arthritis” balm when given the so-called “clear” by his trainer Greg Anderson.  At the heart of the government’s case is proving the 46-year-old former MLB All Star knowingly used steroids or performance-enhancing drugs giving him an unfair advantage pursuing his two most coveted records, namely, the single-season and lifetime home run records once owned by Roger Maris and Hank Aaron.

            Nearly eight years since Bond’s told a federal grand jury that he did not knowingly use steroids, federal prosecutors have pursued perjury and obstruction of justice.  With the economy still sputtering and so many citizens out of work, it’s difficult to justify the government wasting time and spending millions prosecuting Bonds’ victimless crime.  Bonds watched in 1998 St. Louis Cardinal slugger Mark McGwire and Chicago Cubs’s outfielder Sammy Sosa obliterate Roger Maris’37-year-old single-season homerun record.  Bonds’ observed the heft of McGwire and Sosa, both suspected but denied using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.  It wasn’t until McGwire’s former teammate and “bash-brother”  Jose Canseco published “Juiced:  Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids’and How Baseball Got Big” Feb. 14, 2005 that the steroid spotlight hit professional sports.

            Watching McGwire and Sosa steal the headlines, Bonds decided that he’d give himself the same advantage at a time when MLB had lax steroid rules.  Canseco blew the whistle on many of his steroid-guzzling associates in baseball prompting the same kinds of denials of extramarital affairs, the most famous case involving former President Boll Clinton’s denial under oath of his sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.  Like Bonds trial on perjury and obstruction of justice, Clinton was impeached for the “high crimes and misdemeanors,” lying under oath about having sex with Lewinsky.  While Clinton was acquitted Feb. 12, 1999, Bonds could wind up convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for something so trivial, so inconsequential that it makes a mockery of U.S. justice system.  Bonds may have trouble convincing a jury he was oblivious.

                Once McGwire obliterated Maris’ single-season homerun record, steroids, Human Growth Hormone and other testosterone-boosting nutritional supplements became the craze.  Performance enhancing chemists, like the ones at the Bay Area Laboratory Collective [BALCO], worked feverishly to create undetectable steroids.  Bonds’ legal defense involves the incredulous idea that he thought the “clear” he received from his trainer was a flaxseed-based arthritic remedy, not a drug designed to build muscle bulk.  Anyone following baseball since Canseco and McGwire bulked up in Oakland between 1985-1992, suspicions of steroid use plagued MLB.  Only after McGwire left for St. Louis in 1997 and broke Maris’ record in 1998, did the steroid scandal hit a critical mass, causing endless speculation about what Canseco would call “Juiced” in 2005.

            When McGwire testified before House Government Reform Committee March 17, 2005, he refused to discuss any past steroid abuse, essentially taking the Fifth Amendment.  Unlike Bonds, McGwire didn’t categorically deny steroid use but instead just refused to answer questions, essentially indicting himself in the court of public opinion.  Like Clinton denying a “sexual relationship” with Monica Lewinsky, Bonds denied knowingly using steroids.  Clinton’s Washington lawyer Bob Bennett at the time said that his client’s testimony was technically correct, since the president never had intercourse with Monica.  That’s the same explanation Clinton gave when he insisted he smoked pot but never inhaled.  Given the history of steroid use in MLB, Bonds is going to have a tough sell insisting he thought BALCO’s “clear” was a remedy for muscle aches-and-pains.

            Regardless of whether or not the government can prove its perjury and obstruction of justice case against Bonds, the trivial nature of the perjury makes it difficult, even if convicted, to apply jail time.  “I think the federal government should be clearing their own backyard before they start stepping into someone else’s,” said Robert Powell, a friend of Bond’s trainer Greg Anderson.  While perjury or obstruction of justice speak for itself, lying about steroid use or sex doesn’t rise to the level of “high-crimes-and-misdemeanors,” questioning the government’s case.  While Bonds faces the hot seat today, multiple Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Roger Clemmons faces his own perjury trial July 6 in Washington, D.C.  Before the government wastes more time and tax dollars prosecuting frivolous perjury trials, they should look more carefully at the charges before filing suit.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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