Barry Bonds quest for HR record

[Tim McG]

Once again for clarity, I never said Bonds didn't use steroids.

What I did say was there is no substantiated or physical proof that he had.

so you do think he took steroids, and therefore he did commit perjury.

you don't think they'll be able to prove it, so their efforts to do so amount to a witch hunt?

C'mon, you're just playing with the words now, JS.

Go back and read what I wrote on this thread. It's clear enough what I meant.

[papsrus]

You continue to be a dumb ass fuck.

I'm sensing a little hostility here.

Goddamn fuck shit piss, papsrus, shit asshole damn shit hell!

What the fuck are you talking about, motherfucker? You're a sad, pathetic lonely fucking man!

I'm gettin' all warm and fuzzy here.

... completely off topic, but ... I'm reminded of the final episode of season one (I think) of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," where they finally open their restaurant. Open kitchen overlooks the restaurant. Surprise, the chef has turrets. Starts swearing away. Everyone horrified. To salvage the situation, co-owner Larry starts blurting out obscenities too, to make it seem as though shouting obscenities is some sort of theme for the restaurant. Before you know it, the whole place is swearing away like mad! Hysterical.

Now, back to Bonds. He's a motherfucking shithead and so are his shit-pissing, fuck-faced critics.

(I feel better now. Off to church I go.)

Edited November 18, 2007 by papsrus

[Brownian Motion]

You continue to be a dumb ass fuck.

I'm sensing a little hostility here.

Goddamn fuck shit piss, papsrus, shit asshole damn shit hell!

What the fuck are you talking about, motherfucker? You're a sad, pathetic lonely fucking man!

Natural Soul,

You have fingered the wrong dude.

[Van Basten II]

You continue to be a dumb ass fuck.

I'm sensing a little hostility here.

Goddamn fuck shit piss, papsrus, shit asshole damn shit hell!

What the fuck are you talking about, motherfucker? You're a sad, pathetic lonely fucking man!

I'm gettin' all warm and fuzzy here.

... completely off topic, but ... I'm reminded of the final episode of season one (I think) of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," where they finally open their restaurant. Open kitchen overlooks the restaurant. Surprise, the chef has turrets. Starts swearing away. Everyone horrified. To salvage the situation, co-owner Larry starts blurting out obscenities too, to make it seem as though shouting obscenities is some sort of theme for the restaurant. Before you know it, the whole place is swearing away like mad! Hysterical.

Now, back to Bonds. He's a motherfucking shithead and so are his shit-pissing, fuck-faced critics.

(I feel better now. Off to church I go.)

Ah the fuckin' son of a bitch , he's such a cocksucker, what a miserable bastard that motherfucking shitface.

You're right i feel better, next time i'll do it in Québecois.

[papsrus]

We'd better be careful or we'll end up on some search list for weird porn ....

[Van Basten II]

You have fingered the wrong dude.

Talking about weird porn, this sentence could be misconstrued.

[Matthew]

[NaturalSoul]

You have fingered the wrong dude.

Talking about weird porn, this sentence could be misconstrued.

-_-

[NaturalSoul]

You continue to be a dumb ass fuck.

I'm sensing a little hostility here.

Goddamn fuck shit piss, papsrus, shit asshole damn shit hell!

What the fuck are you talking about, motherfucker? You're a sad, pathetic lonely fucking man!

Natural Soul,

You have fingered the wrong dude.

Well, i apologize for my childish post. Was just trying to bring some humor here!

[Jazzmoose]

Well, i apologize for my childish post. Was just trying to bring some humor here!

Exactly the way I took it, dude, though I admit this talk of "fingering" has me nervous...

[Tim McG]

Stop it already....I'm dying, here!

Edited November 19, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[7/4]

looks like I've been missing all the fun over here. :eye:

[alocispepraluger102]

what has happened to our benign civilized posting style?

that, plus the intelligence of the posters, makes this board so very special.

new readers would not be impressed.

morty has read enough and is going to bed.

Edited November 22, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[7/4]

what has happened to our benign civilized posting style?

that, plus the intelligence of the posters, makes this board so very special.

some folks are just like that.

m*&^$% f!@#$%.

[Van Basten II]

No matter how smart prople are, they'll be looking for getting a release and act like a bunch of dumbasses once in a while.

As long as it remains in superficial threads like this one, it's all fun. If we started behaving this way in threads like recommendations and subjects more relevant to this board then we could worry about it.

Edited November 22, 2007 by Van Basten II

[Tim McG]

No matter how smart prople are, they'll be looking for getting a release and act like a bunch of dumbasses once in a while.

As long as it remains in superficial threads like this one, it's all fun. If we started behaving this way in threads like recommendations and subjects more relevant to this board then we could worry about it.

True dat.

Although some folks ramp up the adrennaline a bit more than others around here, er...not me, of course

[Tim McG]

My apologies, Aloc.

[Dan Gould]

A fascinating look at the legal issues surrounding Bonds' indictment, courtesy of the Hardball Times. Pretty damning, too, and what surprises me is that this lawyer is identified as a criminal defense attorney. Judging from Court TV, criminal defense attorneys are constitutionally incapable of saying positive things about a prosecutor and his case.

Barry Bonds – A guide to help you cut through the noise

by Keith Scherer

November 21, 2007

Keith Scherer is a federal criminal defense attorney. He also does a lot of urinalysis drug cases in military court. He contributed the legal analysis to Will Carroll’s The Juice, and he is a longtime contributor to Baseball Prospectus. THT asked him to comment on some of the questions that have popped up in the wake of the Barry Bonds indictment. The questions are derived from actual questions he had been asked recently and issues discussed among fans and media.

Bonds’s attorney keeps saying the government has been after his client from the beginning. Is it true?

In the BALCO case, Bonds was offered immunity. The U.S. Attorney’s office doesn’t offer immunity to the target of an investigation. From the prosecution’s point of view, Bonds’ reputation was collateral damage; he was not their primary target.

By seeking this indictment, are they selectively prosecuting him while ignoring others who didn’t come clean?

At least two other people—Trevor Graham and Tammy Thomas—have been indicted for lying to BALCO investigators or the grand jury, and Marion Jones has already pled guilty to lying.

But aren’t they coming down harder on Bonds than they did on the people who leaked the grand jury testimony?

The “people” who leaked the testimony was actually one person. Contrary to public perception, the source of the leak wasn’t someone on the government’s team; in fact, it was an attorney for one of the BALCO defendants. The attorney was convicted and received a sentence of 30 months in jail. Bonds, on the other hand, would likely face a sentence of only eight to 12 months. The charged offenses carry a maximum sentence of 30 years but you can ignore that. Realistically, he’s looking at more time than the people who cooperated, but probably not more than a year.

An indictment doesn’t mean anything, does it? Prosecutors can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

Indictments are not hard to get, that’s true. One of the obvious reasons for that, a reason that a lot of people overlook, is that when it gets to that stage, the government usually has the goods on the bad guy. An indictment, as you probably know, means that the grand jury thinks there’s probable cause to believe the defendant committed the crimes. Probable cause is not a high standard to meet.

But think about it: It does a prosecutor no good to ram a bad case through the grand jury, only to lose it at trial. The U.S. Attorney’s office, unlike some state and military prosecutor’s offices, never settles for probable cause. They approach the grand jury aiming to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Their goal is to come out of the grand jury with evidence so overwhelming that they can force the defendant to take a deal. Federal prosecutors could get a bad case indicted, but it wouldn’t be worth their time.

But is the case against Bonds weak? The defense attorneys keep saying that.

The U.S. Attorney’s office isn’t perfect, and federal prosecutors lose on occasion, but they never bring a weak case to trial. This is especially true in a celebrity case like this one, one that is being overseen by the highest levels of authority. A loss in the Bonds case would be a career killer, and the prosecution wouldn’t risk taking this case to trial if it was as weak his Michael Rains says.

Bonds’ lawyers are doing a patch job on his reputation as much they’re defending him on the legal merits, so take everything they say with a lot of salt. It’s a California case, with all the grandstanding you’d expect, so don’t take the lawyers’ public pronouncements too seriously. More importantly, keep in mind that the defense attorneys have not seen yet what the grand jury saw. They don’t know what the government’s case is, so there’s really no reason to believe them when they say the case is crap.

But it took prosecutors four years to persuade the grand jury to indict Bonds.

No it didn’t. Bonds testified four years ago, but the grand jury didn’t begin investigating him for perjury and obstruction until early in 2005, and there have been reports that the case could have been indicted a year ago. Among other things, there were political reasons for waiting, such as the lead prosecutor being a casualty of the Alberto Gonzalez firing scandal.

That’s still a long time. Why did it take so long?

It really isn’t a long time. Grand juries are often out that long, and it’s not a big deal when they get extended, or when the prosecutors present the case to a new grand jury in order to buy more time to develop the case.

What was the grand jury doing all that time?

There is a lot of misunderstanding about how a grand jury works. It’s not as if they were locked in a room with the prosecutors eight hours a day for nearly three years. You can’t think of a grand jury the same way you think of a trial jury. For one thing, a grand jury only meets only once or twice a week. For another, a grand jury will investigate more than one case or one target at a time. In this case, we know that the grand jury was investigating Marion Jones as well as others.

Lastly, the grand jury reportedly had a ton of material to go through: bank records, phone records, emails, lab reports, and other documents, in addition to hearing testimony from numerous witnesses. There is nothing unusual about how this grand jury did its business.

Did Greg Anderson have anything to do with why the indictment took as long as it did?

No doubt. The question is whether the government needed to wait. There is no way the government pinned its entire case to Greg Anderson’s cooperation. The U.S. Attorney’s office would never do that. However, Anderson’s cooperation would have been the fatal blow—that’s obvious, isn’t it? The prosecutors probably believed that if they had Anderson’s cooperation, Bonds would have had to give up. He would have taken a plea deal, and everyone would have been spared vast sums of money and time.

In light of that, it made sense for the prosecutors, judge, and grand jury to wait him out. Once the prosecution and grand jury became convinced that he would never testify, they decided to go forward with what they already had, and they returned the indictment.

Did the prosecutors lie when they told the judge Anderson’s cooperation was necessary?

The question assumes that the judge jailed Anderson for civil contempt solely because the prosecution said that without his testimony the case couldn’t go forward. That’s the assumption, but again, the U.S. Attorney’s office would never pin its entire case on the cooperation of one witness, certainly not in a high-profile case and not with a witness who had publicly sworn he would never cooperate.

We have no real idea what the prosecutors told the judge, but even if they said, at the time, that Anderson had essential information, it could be that by last week a) they had enough even without him, or b) they were able to develop new evidence during the time he was in jail, so that they no longer needed his help.

The indictment doesn’t say anything about tax evasion. Why not?

We don’t know. Unlike the defense team, the prosecutors don’t talk to the press, so we’re going to have to wait to see what happened with the tax issues. It’s possible that Bonds will face a separate indictment that will deal with tax evasion. That would make sense, since the tax issues have nothing to do with Bonds’ grand jury testimony, BALCO, or drugs.

If it turned out that the tax case wasn’t solid, the prosecution might have decided to let it go. A smart prosecutor wouldn’t give the defense a chance to distract the jury from a strong case with a weak one. In fact, the U.S. Attorney’s office has a policy of only charging the most serious, readily provable offenses, so if the case was weak they probably would have let it go.

Yet another possibility is that the tax case wasn’t quite serious enough to warrant inclusion in the indictment. The amount rumored to be in issue is between $50,000 and $100,000—unreported income from memorabilia sales, autographed baseballs, etc., used to finance his affair with Kimberly Bell. If that figure is correct, assume that about one-third of that would be the tax “loss” to the government. That’s a relatively small amount; an unofficial standard is that tax losses of less than $40,000 rarely result in criminal prosecution, and Bonds’ loss would have been under $40,000.

But isn’t tax evasion more serious than what Bonds was indicted for?

In what sense is tax evasion more serious than lying to a grand jury? In terms of moral culpability, judges and prosecutors would consider lying to a grand jury to be far worse. In terms of legal jeopardy, comparing one offense to the other, we can’t really answer that until we know how much the tax loss was. It’s safe to say, though, that in the context of this case the lying would be far more serious in the eyes of the court and prosecution.

According to the indictment, the government has forensic proof that Bonds used controlled substances. Victor Conte said there may have been a mix-up at the lab.

It’s not likely. Conte claimed that BALCO doesn’t have a rigorous system for ensuring the integrity of the specimens it tests for its clients. That’s hard to believe. World-class athletes pay his company a lot of money for two things: one, to help them engineer their bodies; two, to keep it a secret. There is no way to accomplish those things if you don’t keep scrupulous control over the samples.

It’s a simple process, a checklist procedure followed by tens of thousands of people every day around the country. Urinalysis programs are run very smoothly and the incidence of error is extremely low. You would think that’s especially true when you’re handling small batches for elite clients. On the testing end, Bonds’ specimen was tested at Quest Diagnostics, one of the “big three” labs in the U.S. Quest has an excellent reputation for the integrity of its analysis and quality controls.

Is it possible that someone may have tampered with Bonds’ sample?

“Tampered” really means that someone slipped metabolized controlled substances into the specimen, or swapped Bonds’s clean specimen for a dirty one. If someone spiked or swapped a BALCO specimen, it would have been done by someone at BALCO or Quest. Why would someone at BALCO be spiking the client’s specimen, even before the feds were ever on the case? And if the client’s personal data is kept secret, how would someone at Quest know which sample belonged to Bonds?

There doesn’t seem to be any real chance of a frame-up. Given that the specimens were collected privately and securely, for profit and with a premium on protecting privacy, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of a mistake either.

Assuming Bonds can find a team, will be available to play baseball in 2008?

Yes. Unless Bonds takes a deal, his case won’t go to trial before the end of the 2008 season. It can take several months—often more than a year—to bring a relatively simple case to trial in federal criminal court. Even when both parties expect that the case will eventually end in a plea, it can take that long to get to it.

Why will his case take so long? We’re sick of it already.

As a media event it has grown tedious, but as a legal event it’s just getting started. In Bonds’ case, there are likely to be tens of thousands of pages of documents—lab reports, bank records, phone records, emails, and so on—and it will take the defense months to analyze them. There might also be wire recordings and transcripts, and other kinds of non-documentary evidence, and it will have to be analyzed. In addition to the time it will take to review the government’s evidence, you can expect many months of pretrial motions, contested hearings, status hearings, and scheduling delays. The defense is going to be very aggressive, especially since this case, win or lose, is as much about rehabilitating Bonds’s public image as it is about defending the case.

If the case ever gets to a contested trial, it will involve all those documents, plus numerous lay and expert witnesses, and several more motion hearings. Once the trial is over, if Bonds has been convicted the court will take some time before holding the sentencing hearing. There is almost no chance this case will be resolved before the end of the 2008 season, so if a team wants to use Bonds, he’ll be available.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/...ough-the-noise/

[Tim McG]

what has happened to our benign civilized posting style?

that, plus the intelligence of the posters, makes this board so very special.

new readers would not be impressed.

morty has read enough and is going to bed.

Speak to Dan Gould.

[Tim McG]

And Keith Scherer was involved with this case, um...how again?

Court TV?

Blog, blog, blog, Dan.

Edited November 26, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Tim McG]

I patiently await your oh-so-abusive retort....replete with the obligatory obscenities, of course.

Babble on, Dan.

Edited November 26, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Chalupa]

Movie planned about Bonds and steroids

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071129/ap_en_...4rbYPwwd52YExkF

[Aggie87]

SI: Bonds' No. 756 ball not going to Hall of Fame

NEW YORK (AP) -- The ball Barry Bonds launched for his record-breaking 756th home run took a strange turn Tuesday on its possible path to the Hall of Fame.

First, the Hall announced it wouldn't take the asterisk-stamped souvenir because talks with its owner broke down over whether the ball would be loaned or donated. Hours later, the man who paid $752,467 for the prize presented a different view.

"At this time, the ball is on route to the Hall of Fame," fashion designer Marc Ecko said in a statement. "I hope that they will accept it and honor their commitment to display it at some point in time."

Ecko spokeswoman Laurie Baker said the ball would be offered as a "permanent donation."

Not since Boston first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz caught the last out of the 2004 World Series has a Hall-bound ball caused so much commotion. It was uncertain whether the Bonds ball would actually wind up inside the shrine at Cooperstown, N.Y.

"Should the owner choose to unconditionally donate the ball, we would be delighted and, of course, accept the offer and would display it at some point in time," Hall spokesman Brad Horn said Tuesday night.

Horn said new artifacts need to be mounted and labeled before they can be shown. If the Hall took the Bonds ball, he said, there would be no delay in presenting it.

"It would be the same thing we told Ken Griffey Jr. about his batting helmet from his 600th home run," Horn said.

Ecko bought the 756 ball in an online auction last September, a month after Bonds broke Hank Aaron's career home run record.

Ecko then asked fans to vote in an Internet poll on what he should do with the ball. The winner: Brand it with an asterisk, to reflect the steroid allegations surrounding Bonds, and give it to the Hall.

The ball indeed was marked, with the asterisk dye-cut into the cowhide where "Major League Baseball" is printed.

Nearly all of the Hall's 35,000-plus artifacts were given on a permanent basis. The Hall does make exceptions, especially when it has nothing else to illustrate a story -- Willie Mays loaned the glove he used to make his famous, over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series.

Bonds donated the batting helmets he wore when he hit his 755th and 756th home runs.

After many conversations back and forth, the Hall said Tuesday afternoon that recent talks with Ecko had "unfortunately reached an impasse."

"The owner's previous commitment to unconditionally donate the baseball has changed to a loan. As a result, the Hall of Fame will not be able to accept the baseball," the Hall said.

Early Tuesday evening, Ecko responded.

"I am surprised that the Hall issued a statement that said they would no longer accept the Barry Bonds' 756th home run baseball. We had been in communication with them just this morning and the Hall did not mention that they would change their position and no longer accept the ball," he said.

"Based on the Hall of Fame's previous statements that they would both accept and display the ball, the only open issue we were talking about was the Hall's recent indication of discomfort in displaying it and addressing the controversy surrounding the record."

The Hall held many internal discussions and consulted with several prominent museums last year before deciding it would accept the marked ball.

Bonds called Ecko an "idiot" when the designer announced plans to hold the vote. The slugger later said he would boycott the Hall if it displayed the ball with an asterisk.

Bonds finished the season with 762 home runs. The San Francisco Giants did not offer him a contract for this year, and he hasn't gotten an offer to play for another team.

[Dan Gould]

This guy is an idiot. He said from the start that he would donate it, unless "blast it off into space" won the internet poll (or was it "blow it up"?). Now he only wants to "lend" it? WTF?

And its even worse since Bonds said he would shun election if its on display. It was the perfect way to keep him out - or at least keep him from having his moment in the sun (with a mostly empty dais behind him).

[Tim McG]

This guy is an idiot. He said from the start that he would donate it, unless "blast it off into space" won the internet poll (or was it "blow it up"?). Now he only wants to "lend" it? WTF?

And its even worse since Bonds said he would shun election if its on display. It was the perfect way to keep him out - or at least keep him from having his moment in the sun (with a mostly empty dais behind him).

Marc Ecko is, indeed, an idiot. Agreed.

But what can you expect from a friggin' fashion designer anyway?

I vote we asterisk his di-, er...forehead.