LawFuel – A federal judge on Friday unsealed grand jury testimony in which Barry Bonds insisted he had never knowingly used banned drugs even when confronted with documents indicating he had tested positive for steroids, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The contents of Bonds’ 2003 testimony from the BALCO steroids scandal were first reported by The Chronicle in 2004, but the transcript itself had never been made available to the public.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge Susan Illston ordered the transcript unsealed, saying it was germane to Bonds’ upcoming trial on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
Also at the hearing, the judge told federal prosecutors they had improperly drafted Bonds’ indictment, in which he was accused of repeatedly lying under oath about using banned drugs supplied by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative in Burlingame.
Before the prosecution of the former Giants star can go forward, the government must either rewrite the indictment, which charged Bonds with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, or file a new one, the judge said. She set another hearing on the matter for March 21.
The unsealed transcript gives a detailed account of Bonds’ Dec. 4, 2003, appearance before a grand jury that was investigating both BALCO officials and Bonds’ personal trainer, Greg Anderson, on suspicion of distributing undetectable steroids called “the cream” and “the clear.”
In sworn testimony, Bonds acknowledged receiving clear and cream substances from Anderson but said his trainer described them as flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm for arthritis.
