Judge Balks at Bonds Indictment

Feds told to revise charges after trying to jam multiple offenses into perjury counts
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 29, 2008 7:03 PM CST
Judge Balks at Bonds Indictment
This is an artist sketch showing from left to right, Barry Bonds, defense attorney Allen Ruby, defense attorney Cristina Arguedasan, prosecutor Matthew Parrella and U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston where they set a trial date in San Francisco, Friday, Dec. 7, 2007. Bonds is accused of repeatedly...   (Associated Press)

The government’s case against Barry Bonds hit a snag today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, with a judge ruling that it included multiple offenses in four of the counts of perjury in the indictment of baseball's home-run king. The feds must rewrite or re-file the indictment, Judge Susan Illston said in calling them "duplicitous."

Bonds’ lawyers have other problems with the indictment, and have filed motions claiming he committed no crime in trying to answer "imprecise, redundant, overlapping" questions with "merely incomplete, misleading or nonresponsive" answers. Illston also ordered that Bonds' 2003 testimony before a grand jury investigating steroids in sports be unsealed; though it had been leaked to the Chronicle the transcript has never been made public. (More Barry Bonds stories.)

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