With a Nod, Bonds Pleads Not Guilty
By DUFF WILSON
Published: December 8, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7 — Barry Bonds, baseball’s home run king and the most prominent target of a five-year federal investigation into performance-enhancing drugs in sports, stood in a hushed federal courtroom Friday morning with his hands clasped behind his back and pleaded not guilty to five felony charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Flanked by a team of six lawyers and accompanied by his wife, Liz, he simply nodded when United States Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James asked if he understood his rights as a criminal defendant.
Later, he said “I do” when United States District Judge Susan Illston asked if he understood the terms of his release. He is not required to put up any money now but will have to forfeit $500,000 if he violates the judge’s instructions.
Cheers and shouts of “We love you, Barry!” from a small crowd of supporters greeted Bonds after the hearing as he was leaving the federal courthouse. The supporters were far outnumbered by a media pack that harked back to the criminal trials of Michael Jackson and O. J. Simpson.
Bonds was processed — fingerprinted and photographed, front and side — by the United States Marshals Service on Thursday. The entire proceeding Friday before two judges, sharing a courtroom for the news media’s convenience, took less than 20 minutes. Bonds said only seven words, including his name, age (43), “I do” and twice “Yes.”
His new lead criminal defense lawyer, Allen Ruby, said Bonds would plead not guilty to all the charges and would likely file a motion to dismiss the indictment.
After court, Ruby said: “Today, Barry Bonds is innocent. He has trust and faith in the justice system. He will defend these charges. He is confident of a good outcome.”
Michael L. Rains, Bonds’s criminal defense lawyer since 2003, who is now ceding the lead role to Ruby, said Bonds’s demeanor was “matter-of-fact” in getting ready to face the indictment. “He’s looking forward to the court proceedings and to being vindicated,” Rains said outside the courtroom.
The court date was Bonds’s first public appearance since criminal charges were filed three weeks ago. The Nov. 15 indictment, which cites 19 times that Bonds lied under oath, came four years after he gave sworn testimony to a grand jury in which he denied he used performance-enhancing drugs during the greatest home run spree in baseball history. He told the grand jury he thought he was taking flaxseed oil.
The government’s lead investigator on the five-year Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative case, the Internal Revenue Service special agent Jeff Novitzky, sat erect in the front of the courtroom watching Bonds.
Bonds appeared in a wood-paneled courtroom on the 19th floor of the Philip Burton Federal Building and United States Court House, two floors above the grand jury room where he had testified for three hours on Dec. 4, 2003.
If convicted, Bonds faces a penalty of up to 30 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders. Bonds is the biggest name snared in the five-year Balco investigation. Six people have pleaded guilty so far, including the Balco president and vice president, Bonds’s trainer, and a lawyer who leaked transcripts of Bonds’s and other athletes’ grand jury testimony.
The defense — newly hired top-tier lawyers — won the first argument in the case. While the assistant United States attorney Matthew A. Parrella sought to limit Bonds’s travel to within the United States, Ruby asked that he be allowed to go anywhere in North America to pursue his baseball career because Toronto has a major league team. A free agent who was not re-signed by the San Francisco Giants after the 2007 season, Bonds is unemployed and hoping to sign on with another team. Judge Illston ruled in Bonds’s favor. But he must still petition for permission to travel outside North America.
Judge Illston, who has presided over all the Balco cases, set Feb. 7 as the date for the next hearing and said Bonds did not need to attend. No trial date has been set. Bonds’s lawyers want time for what promises to be a series of preliminary motions to try to keep the case from ever going to a jury.
The judge asked Bonds if he understood he was waiving his right to a speedy trial within 70 days. “Yes,” he replied.
Prosecutors will begin sharing all their evidence in the case with the defense next week, Parrella said in court. That will provide Bonds and his team with their first look at the evidence against him, which is expected to center on a privately administered positive steroid test from 2000 that the government says it has connected to Bonds. The grand jury testimony of his former longtime girlfriend, Kimberly Bell; his former best friend and business partner, Steve Hoskins; and other professional baseball players is also expected to be key to the government’s case.
Ruby told the judge that he may file a motion to dismiss the indictment for “facial defects,” but did not elaborate.
Peter Keane, a professor and dean emeritus at Golden Gate University School of Law, said such a motion would argue that the indictment was defective or insufficient in stating a crime. But Keane, a 30-year veteran defense lawyer who has followed the case closely, said he did not see any obvious problems with the indictment.
Keane said Bonds’s new defense team was “very effective, very skilled, very talented.”
The Bonds team is led by Ruby, a former wrestler who is as big as Bonds and uses his Stanford law training to good effect in federal court. The team also includes Cristina C. Arguedas, another aggressive veteran in the top tier of Bay Area defense lawyers, and Dennis Riordan, a motion-writing and appellate specialist. Paula Canny, a lawyer and friend of Greg Anderson, Bonds’s trainer, who has refused to testify against him, said the new lawyers were a brilliant team that will work together well. “If you could turn the Yankees into lawyers or the lawyers into Yankees, I’d take Bonds’s dream team over the Yankees’ starting lineup,” Canny said in an interview. “Even with A-Rod.”
Bonds repeatedly came up from his Beverly Hills home to conduct a methodical search for his legal team, interviewing numerous lawyers, and he plans to be active in the defense, according to a person with knowledge of that search who spoke on condition of not being identified. Bonds did not like how much another prominent defense lawyer, John Keker, was going to charge him, the person said. He was also concerned with how little control he would have in the defense with Keker on the case as well as with Keker’s aversion to working with Rains, and so turned to other candidates, the person said.
As a small crowd applauded Bonds in the lobby of the courthouse, an older woman who identified herself as his Aunt Rosie hugged him and offered him $5 toward his hefty bond. Bonds laughed. One man offered a baseball that Bonds declined to autograph. Bonds and his wife were driven away in a black S.U.V.
Bonds hit a single-season record 73 home runs for the Giants in 2001. Federal prosecutors say they have documentary evidence that a private test Bonds took a year earlier was positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
The 10-page federal indictment lists 19 answers Bonds gave the grand jury that prosecutors say were knowingly false on material questions, which is the standard for perjury. Material questions were those relating to illegal drug distribution, which was the subject the grand jury was investigating. The questions covered steroid use in 2000, 2001 and 2002 and the use of human growth hormone at unspecified dates.
News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/sports/baseball/08bonds.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=baseball
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7 — Barry Bonds, baseball’s home run king and the most prominent target of a five-year federal investigation into performance-enhancing drugs in sports, stood in a hushed federal courtroom Friday morning with his hands clasped behind his back and pleaded not guilty to five felony charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Flanked by a team of six lawyers and accompanied by his wife, Liz, he simply nodded when United States Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James asked if he understood his rights as a criminal defendant.
Later, he said “I do” when United States District Judge Susan Illston asked if he understood the terms of his release. He is not required to put up any money now but will have to forfeit $500,000 if he violates the judge’s instructions.
Cheers and shouts of “We love you, Barry!” from a small crowd of supporters greeted Bonds after the hearing as he was leaving the federal courthouse. The supporters were far outnumbered by a media pack that harked back to the criminal trials of Michael Jackson and O. J. Simpson.
Bonds was processed — fingerprinted and photographed, front and side — by the United States Marshals Service on Thursday. The entire proceeding Friday before two judges, sharing a courtroom for the news media’s convenience, took less than 20 minutes. Bonds said only seven words, including his name, age (43), “I do” and twice “Yes.”
His new lead criminal defense lawyer, Allen Ruby, said Bonds would plead not guilty to all the charges and would likely file a motion to dismiss the indictment.
After court, Ruby said: “Today, Barry Bonds is innocent. He has trust and faith in the justice system. He will defend these charges. He is confident of a good outcome.”
Michael L. Rains, Bonds’s criminal defense lawyer since 2003, who is now ceding the lead role to Ruby, said Bonds’s demeanor was “matter-of-fact” in getting ready to face the indictment. “He’s looking forward to the court proceedings and to being vindicated,” Rains said outside the courtroom.
The court date was Bonds’s first public appearance since criminal charges were filed three weeks ago. The Nov. 15 indictment, which cites 19 times that Bonds lied under oath, came four years after he gave sworn testimony to a grand jury in which he denied he used performance-enhancing drugs during the greatest home run spree in baseball history. He told the grand jury he thought he was taking flaxseed oil.
The government’s lead investigator on the five-year Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative case, the Internal Revenue Service special agent Jeff Novitzky, sat erect in the front of the courtroom watching Bonds.
Bonds appeared in a wood-paneled courtroom on the 19th floor of the Philip Burton Federal Building and United States Court House, two floors above the grand jury room where he had testified for three hours on Dec. 4, 2003.
If convicted, Bonds faces a penalty of up to 30 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders. Bonds is the biggest name snared in the five-year Balco investigation. Six people have pleaded guilty so far, including the Balco president and vice president, Bonds’s trainer, and a lawyer who leaked transcripts of Bonds’s and other athletes’ grand jury testimony.
The defense — newly hired top-tier lawyers — won the first argument in the case. While the assistant United States attorney Matthew A. Parrella sought to limit Bonds’s travel to within the United States, Ruby asked that he be allowed to go anywhere in North America to pursue his baseball career because Toronto has a major league team. A free agent who was not re-signed by the San Francisco Giants after the 2007 season, Bonds is unemployed and hoping to sign on with another team. Judge Illston ruled in Bonds’s favor. But he must still petition for permission to travel outside North America.
Judge Illston, who has presided over all the Balco cases, set Feb. 7 as the date for the next hearing and said Bonds did not need to attend. No trial date has been set. Bonds’s lawyers want time for what promises to be a series of preliminary motions to try to keep the case from ever going to a jury.
The judge asked Bonds if he understood he was waiving his right to a speedy trial within 70 days. “Yes,” he replied.
Prosecutors will begin sharing all their evidence in the case with the defense next week, Parrella said in court. That will provide Bonds and his team with their first look at the evidence against him, which is expected to center on a privately administered positive steroid test from 2000 that the government says it has connected to Bonds. The grand jury testimony of his former longtime girlfriend, Kimberly Bell; his former best friend and business partner, Steve Hoskins; and other professional baseball players is also expected to be key to the government’s case.
Ruby told the judge that he may file a motion to dismiss the indictment for “facial defects,” but did not elaborate.
Peter Keane, a professor and dean emeritus at Golden Gate University School of Law, said such a motion would argue that the indictment was defective or insufficient in stating a crime. But Keane, a 30-year veteran defense lawyer who has followed the case closely, said he did not see any obvious problems with the indictment.
Keane said Bonds’s new defense team was “very effective, very skilled, very talented.”
The Bonds team is led by Ruby, a former wrestler who is as big as Bonds and uses his Stanford law training to good effect in federal court. The team also includes Cristina C. Arguedas, another aggressive veteran in the top tier of Bay Area defense lawyers, and Dennis Riordan, a motion-writing and appellate specialist. Paula Canny, a lawyer and friend of Greg Anderson, Bonds’s trainer, who has refused to testify against him, said the new lawyers were a brilliant team that will work together well. “If you could turn the Yankees into lawyers or the lawyers into Yankees, I’d take Bonds’s dream team over the Yankees’ starting lineup,” Canny said in an interview. “Even with A-Rod.”
Bonds repeatedly came up from his Beverly Hills home to conduct a methodical search for his legal team, interviewing numerous lawyers, and he plans to be active in the defense, according to a person with knowledge of that search who spoke on condition of not being identified. Bonds did not like how much another prominent defense lawyer, John Keker, was going to charge him, the person said. He was also concerned with how little control he would have in the defense with Keker on the case as well as with Keker’s aversion to working with Rains, and so turned to other candidates, the person said.
As a small crowd applauded Bonds in the lobby of the courthouse, an older woman who identified herself as his Aunt Rosie hugged him and offered him $5 toward his hefty bond. Bonds laughed. One man offered a baseball that Bonds declined to autograph. Bonds and his wife were driven away in a black S.U.V.
Bonds hit a single-season record 73 home runs for the Giants in 2001. Federal prosecutors say they have documentary evidence that a private test Bonds took a year earlier was positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
The 10-page federal indictment lists 19 answers Bonds gave the grand jury that prosecutors say were knowingly false on material questions, which is the standard for perjury. Material questions were those relating to illegal drug distribution, which was the subject the grand jury was investigating. The questions covered steroid use in 2000, 2001 and 2002 and the use of human growth hormone at unspecified dates.
News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/sports/baseball/08bonds.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=baseball
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