Judge Set For Barry Bonds Sentencing Friday Regarding Steroids Case

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Judge Set For Barry Bonds Sentencing Friday Regarding Steroids Case

The next step in baseball legend Barry Bonds' legal odyssey could send him home to his six-bedroom, 10-bath mansion in Beverly Hills, perhaps sporting an ankle bracelet. Or it could send him on the longest walk of his life, through the gates of one of the nation's 117 federal prisons.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is set to sentence Bonds on one count of obstructing justice for providing evasive testimony to a federal grand jury probing the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative steroids scandal in December 2003. The home run king, the most visible athlete captured in the largest doping scandal in sports history, will return to the same federal courthouse where he gave that grand jury testimony eight years ago, this time hoping for a judge's leniency.

Federal prosecutors have urged Illston to send Bonds to prison for 15 months, arguing that he denied using performance enhancing drugs as part of a "calculated plan to obfuscate and distract" the grand jury investigating BALCO, the now-defunct Peninsula lab that once served as the hub of steroids in sports. A jury in April deadlocked on three perjury counts against Bonds, yet prosecutors are seeking to slap the former San Francisco Giant with one of the harshest punishments in the entire BALCO saga.

 

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Federal prosecutors want baseball legend Barry Bonds to serve 15 months in prison for his obstruction of justice conviction, according to a sentencing memo filed in court Thursday.
Defense lawyers argued in their filing that the judge should accept the probation office's recommendation that Bonds be sentenced to two years probation, fined $4,000 and ordered to perform 250 hours of community service.

Bonds, 47, is set to be sentenced on December 16 in a San Francisco federal courtroom, less than two miles from the ballpark where he broke Hank Aaron's major league home run in August 2007.

 

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Bonds Will Serve 30 Days Home Confinement, If That

Bonds was sentenced to two years of probation, 250 hours of community service, a $4,000 fine and 30 days of home confinement. It will take time to determine whether he serves any of it; his appellate specialist, Dennis Riordan, estimated it would take nearly a year and a half for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule.

 

[KennyGS]

His life and all records he attained are tainted. Some will still hold him in high regard, but many will not. I think his career achievements should be stricken from the record books.

 

[webby]

Quite a few athletes (baseball players) are at risk I'd say. Either hall of fame status or records being changed