Bonds Convicted of Obstruction of Justice
 

By Alan Duke, CNN
April 13, 2011 6:15 p.m. EDT

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A sentencing date will be set for baseball's home run king, Barry Bonds, next month.

San Francisco (CNN) -- Jurors on Wednesday convicted Barry Bonds on one count of obstruction of justice, but a mistrial was declared on three counts of perjury after jurors reported that they could not reach agreement.
The verdict shows jurors believed that Bonds lied when he testified to a grand jury in December 2003 that his trainer never injected him with a needle. However, they could not agree that he lied about knowingly using steroids.
Attorneys will return to court May 20 to discuss whether there will be a retrial on the three perjury counts. A sentencing date will be set at that time.
Bonds, 46, was on trial in a San Francisco federal court. Prosecutors dropped a fourth perjury charge against him last week.
Bonds' legal troubles began when he was subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury investigating the illegal distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to athletes.
Bonds was told he was not a target of the investigation, which was centered on the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, known as BALCO. His personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was a target.
"All he had to do was tell the truth," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow said in his closing arguments last week.
Bonds lied to the grand jury because he knew that the truth about his steroids use would "tinge his accomplishments" and hurt his baseball career, Nedrow said. "His secret was so powerful that he couldn't admit it, wouldn't admit it."
The grand jury transcript showed that when he was asked about anabolic steroids before the 2003 baseball season, he said he had not knowingly used them. He did acknowledge using substances Anderson gave him known as "the clear and the cream."
Defense lawyer Allen Ruby, in his closing arguments, said that when Bonds testified in 2003, even investigators didn't know what those substances were.
Bonds told the grand jury he thought Anderson was giving him flaxseed oil, Ruby said.
Nedrow argued that it was "implausible" that Bonds would take drugs "and really not know what they were."
A key question for the jury to decide was not whether Bonds ever used steroids but when it started. His grand jury statement related only to time before the 2003 season.
A urine sample given by Bonds in summer 2003, just months before his grand jury testimony, tested positive for anabolic steroids, but another sample taken weeks earlier tested negative for the drugs.
The jury also had to decide whether Bonds was telling the truth when he told the grand jury that no one other than a doctor had ever given him an injection.
Bonds was indicted in November 2007, just three months after he broke Hank Aaron's major league home run record in a ballpark less than two miles from the San Francisco federal courthouse where his trial just ended.
The San Francisco Giants star did not officially retire after he was indicted, but he never played another game. He ended his 21-year major league career with 762 home runs. He also set the record for most home runs in a single season in 2001, when he hit 73.
Jurors had to decide whether they believed the testimony of Steve and Kathy Hoskins, two former childhood friends who worked for Bonds during the years he allegedly used steroids.
The defense argued that the Hoskinses were motivated by bitterness toward Bonds after he fired them and later accused Steve Hoskins of stealing. A federal criminal investigation of Steve Hoskins was dropped after he became a prosecution witness, the defense argued.
Steve Hoskins, Bonds' assistant and sometimes business partner for a decade, testified that he tried to persuade Bonds to stop using anabolic steroids in 2000 and 2003.
Hoskins testified that he had several conversations with Bonds' doctor about the ballplayer's steroids use, but that doctor denied it when he was called as a prosecution witness.
While he never witnessed Bonds being injected, Hoskins said, he saw Bonds and Anderson emerge from a bedroom with a syringe during spring training in 2000.
Bonds complained to him that year that steroid injections "were making his butt sore," Hoskins said.
Hoskins secretly recorded a locker room conversation with Anderson, Bonds' trainer who allegedly gave Bonds' steroids.
The muffled audio fell short of being "a smoking gun," since Anderson is never heard saying he gave Bonds' steroids.
Bonds' defense attorney suggested that Hoskins made the recording only after Bonds fired him in March 2003.
Steve Hoskins' sister, Kathy Hoskins, worked for Bonds his personal shopper until spring 2003.
She testified that she was in Bonds' bedroom packing his suitcase for a road trip in 2002 when Bonds told Anderson to "stay right here." He then lifted his shirt, and Anderson injected him in his belly button with a syringe, Kathy Hoskins said.
" 'This is Katy. That's my girl. She don't say nothing to nobody,' " Kathy Hoskins said Bonds assured his trainer.
Defense lawyers argued that she lied about the injection incident to support her brother's testimony.
Bonds' lawyers also tried to discredit the testimony of Bonds' former girlfriend, who described physical and emotional changes in Bonds that prosecutors contended were evidence of steroids use.
Kimberly Bell testified in the trial that she noticed Bonds suffered testicular shrinkage, but she told the grand jury in 2003 that she had not seen any shrinkage.
Defense lawyer Cristina Arguedas, in her part of closing arguments, criticized prosecutors for ignoring what she said was Bell's grand jury perjury in exchange for testimony against Bonds.
"They will forgive it if that person will say something bad about Barry Bonds," Arguedas said.
Jurors never heard testimony from Bonds' trainer, because Anderson chose for a third time to go to jail rather than serve as a prosecution witness against his former client.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found Anderson in contempt of court on the first day of trial testimony, when his lawyer informed her that he would not take the stand to answer questions about Bonds steroid use. He was released the day jury deliberations began.
With Anderson not taking the stand, prosecutors were unable to show jurors calendars that allegedly kept track of Bonds' steroid usage.
The eight women and four men on the jury heard 25 prosecution witnesses over two weeks, but the defense rested last week without calling a witness.
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