SAN FRANCISCO –LAWFUEL – Law News Network , Law Jobs – United States Attorney Kevin V. Ryan announced that a federal grand jury in San Francisco today indicted Dr. Bruce Barker on charges of perjury and making false statements to law enforcement officers in connection with his testimony at a federal jury trial involving gun charges.
Dr. Barker, 50, of San Francisco, is a physician employed at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco. According to the indictment, Dr. Barker gave false testimony under oath during the November 2002 trial of Marvin Washington — an individual whom Dr. Barker was sponsoring in an outpatient substance abuse rehabilitation program — in an attempt to influence the outcome of Mr. Washington’s trial.
“According to these charges, this individual provided false testimony about a central issue in a criminal prosecution,” said U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan. “Our criminal justice system relies on the truthful testimony of witnesses, and perjury seriously undermines the integrity of that process.”
In May 2002, Mr. Washington was arrested at the Holly Courts Housing Development in San Francisco for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The arrest occurred after a security guard saw Mr. Washington possessing a gun; police later found a gun hidden on a window ledge outside Mr. Washington’s apartment. Mr. Washington was indicted on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, as well as possessing a firearm with an altered or obliterated serial number on May 1, 2002. In November 2002, the case proceeded to jury trial in the case took place in United States District Court in San Francisco.
Dr. Bruce Barker testified at the trial on behalf of Marvin Washington. The indictment alleges that Dr. Barker testified falsely when he stated under oath that he was present at the Holly Courts Housing Development at the time when a security guard saw Mr. Washington in possession of the gun, and that Mr. Washington did not possess a gun, but was instead holding a cell phone in his hand. When questioned at trial about Kaiser records showing that he was attending to a surgery patient at the hospital in a time frame that was inconsistent with being at Holly Courts during the gun incident, Dr. Barker denied having been present at the hospital.
According to the indictment, Mr. Washington’s trial ended without jury deliberations after Mr. Washington entered guilty pleas to both of the charges in the indictment on November 21, 2002. Upon that conviction, the district court sentenced Mr. Washington to 8 ½ years imprisonment, and Mr. Washington is currently serving that sentence.
The indictment alleges that Dr. Barker made false declarations before the court, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a), when he a) testified that he was at the Holly Courts Housing Development when the security guard saw Mr. Washington with the gun; b) that Mr. Washington did not possess a gun, but possessed a cell phone; and c) that he was not present at the Kaiser Medical Center attending to a patient, as indicated on the hospital records. Dr. Barker is also charged with making false statements to law enforcement officers, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, when he made these same statements to an investigator and prosecutors several days before the trial started.
Dr. Barker will make his first appearance in the case on October 27, 2006, before United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte.
The maximum statutory penalty for each count of the indictment is five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.
An indictment contains only allegations against an individual and, as with all defendants, Dr. Barker must be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Susan Badger is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case, with the assistance of Miche Sharpe. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Further Information:
A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.
Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.
Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay@usdoj.gov.
