February 29, 2008
Screwed Up Indictment
Your tax dollars at work:
A federal judge on Friday told the government to re-craft its perjury case against Barry Bonds, saying prosecutors had improperly lumped multiple alleged offenses into each of four counts of its indictment of the former Giants star.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge Susan Illston said the case could not proceed because Bonds' indictment, handed up by a grand jury in November, was "duplicitous" - a legal term meaning it was improperly charged. By law, the government can only accuse a person of one crime per count of an indictment. But the judge said that in Bonds' perjury case, the slugger was being accused of telling as many as five different lies under oath in each count of the indictment.
She said the government could correct the flaws by rewriting the indictment or filing a new one.
Update: Bonds grand jury testimony is coming to a browser near you.
Posted by David Pinto at
07:20 PM
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Ridiculous!!! You'd think that a federal agent and the USAO would have had their shit together BEFORE indicting Bonds. All that time and money and a flawed indictment? Ridiculous!!!
Do a Google search for the ESPN legal analyst's explanation of why the indictment was filed the way it was. His bottom line (and BP's, from what I remember) is that it was crafted to produce the biggest prison term possible, presumably for intimidation purposes.
In other words, they went with the "each of your lies counts as multiple crimes" approach to produce a "If we convict you on all counts - and you know you're guilty! - you will get TEN YEARS in a federal penitentiary. Sure you don't want to plea-bargain?" negotiation. That seems dumb to me because I judge the chances of success as zero. If Bonds was going to plead out, he would have done so years ago, his lawyers will surely advise him to challenge the indictment on those grounds, and it takes pressure off of Bonds by giving him a way to postpone any legal consequences even further, making it more likely that he can play this year.
It really seems like a case of the prosecution not thinking it through, or deciding that the miniscule chance of success justifies the waste of time and money.
I'm going with the "prosecution is completely incompetent" theory on this one. Shame the judge didn't throw the case out over this.
I think they are going after Clemens because the Bonds case is rapidly falling apart due to prosecutorial error and maybe misconduct.
By the way, when Congress called Bud Selig in to testify about the contraction of the Twins, he made several material statements regarding the sharing of complete financial information with the House that were lies. (Check the 2001 FANS act testimony, statements to Maxine Waters and Melvin Watt - ESPN wrote a piece on it at the time).
Why wasn't Selig charged with perjury?
or as Dave wrote in baseball musings on June 26, 2002, maybe Selig lied about baseball losses..Dave was ahead of his time on law and order
"Selig has testified that baseball lost $232 million in 2001. Baseball's not a public company, so he really doesn't have to make the finances public. But he's testified under oath before Congress as to baseball's losses. What if he's cooking the books, as Forbes seems to be implying? If that's true, did Bud commit perjury? That seems to be what Rep. Waters' question was getting at. Maybe this is the way to get rid of Selig. Like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Maybe, in the wake of Enron and WorldCom we should write our Congressmen and ask them to see if Selig committed perjury. Get them to supeona MLB records. (I wonder if Andersen was their accountant?) Then maybe they could work a deal where Selig leaves baseball or goes to jail. That would be a just reward."
RMT: I remember watching those hearings dumbfounded at how lost and...well...absolutely dumb Selig looked. Jesse Ventura made him look like the fool that we've learned that he is. Good point. Certain members of Congress are grandstanding because the issues facing this country are so dire that they're afraid to actually address them.
Lance Williams articles typically contain factual errors. I recommend linking to the Yahoo Sports Littman articles for reporting on this issue rather than the Comical. Littman makes an effort to report on the actual conduct of the hearings, which I find interesting.