Barry Bonds’ “New” Indictment: Same As the Old Indictment

By: D.K. Wilson

Everyone in any position of management in Major League Baseball is reciting the mantra. Every Big Box sport media outlet writer or talking head is reciting it, too. Every blogger who believed the ruse is humming along:

“You can’t bury a federal indictment in concrete.”

John Saunders uttered those oddly prophetic words this past Sunday on the ESPN show, The Sports Reporters as a final pervasive reason as to why there is no collusion, formal or informal, on the part of MLB owners when it comes to one Barry Lamar Bonds.

“Oddly” prophetic because today he seems like a clairvoyant. Or maybe someone who let something slip out that he wasn’t supposed to let slip.

Regardless of what Saunders knew when, even the quietest of Bonds-haters are rejoicing today. Today, all who refuse to believe that all it took is for one owner to look at the others, say at the MLB Winter Meetings and voice this thought, “I wouldn’t touch him [Bonds] with your —– pencil,” for all the other owners to come to the same silent, hive mind understanding… “We have just rid ourselves and our sport of Barry Bonds,” feel thoroughly vindicated.

But not so fast.

There is a caveat lurking in a dusty corner of the most recent news that Barry Lamar Bonds was just brushed back with a brand, spanking new high, hard 98 miles per hour 14-count indictment are these little annoying fuzzballs called ———— facts.

The facts are that in November of 2007 Bonds was slapped with five charges: four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. However, in February of this year U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston ordered prosecutors to rewrite the indictment because multiple accounts of perjury were lumped into individual charges.

So here we are three months later and guess what?

Here’s the rewrite.

The “new” indictment now charges Bonds with making 14 separate false statements to the BACLO grand jury rather than four. The charges are all in relation to testimony given about his steroid use and relationship with his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson. The obstruction of justice charge relates to the alleged false grand jury testimony:

“It’s exactly the same,” Golden Gate University law professor Peter Keane said. “It’s two ways of saying it’s lying and there’s really no substantial difference between what he was charged with then and what he is charged with now.”

Yet if you read that bastion of journalistic equanimity, The Associated Press’ account the rewrite, you would immediately believe that new charges were brought against Bonds:

Barry Bonds was charged in a new indictment Tuesday with 15 felony counts alleging he lied to a grand jury when he denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs use and that he hampered the federal government’s doping investigation. (emphasis mine)

And you would find no mention other than the quote by Peter Keane of the fact that the new indictment is really not new at all. On ESPN.com the same AP report contains a concise but pertinent amendment of the piece by Mark Fainaru-Wada:

No new lies were alleged in the new indictment and Bonds wouldn’t serve additional prison time if convicted.

However, if you were not fortunate enough to read Fainaru-Wada’s additions to the original article at ESPN.com, you would be stuck wondering whether or not a conviction by way of the rewrite would equate to more time for Bonds.

But for the people predisposed to jump at any information about Barry Bonds that might be able to be twisted into something negative, the mantra of “new allegations, therefore no collusion” rolls off the tongue quite nicely. Or continue with the original:

“You can’t bury a federal indictment in concrete.”

Don’t let those facts smack you where the doctor did when you were born.

Tags: Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson, indictment, perujry, steroids