Barry Bonds trial: Verdict reached on one count
SAN FRANCISCO - There is a partial verdict in the Barry Bonds perjury case.
Lawyers in the case and Bonds were summoned to the courtroom, where Judge Susan Illston said the jury has reached agreement on one of the four counts, CBS News reports.
After the foreman indicated it would be useless to continue deliberating on the other three counts, Illston said she will take a verdict on the one count and declare a mistrial on the rest.
Jury deliberations in the case have stretched well into their fourth day in the case against the seven-time MVP who is charged with three counts of lying to a grand jury in 2003 and one count of obstruction.
Pictures: Barry Bonds through the years
Prosecutors allege that Bonds lied when he denied knowingly taking steroids and human growth hormone. A third count of making a false statement charges that Bonds lied when he said no one other than his doctor ever injected him with anything.
The fourth count is obstruction of justice, which alleges that MLB's all-time home runs leader hindered the grand jury's sports doping investigation by lying.
During closing arguments last week, defense lawyer Allen Ruby reminded the jury that in addition to being proven false, Bonds' statements also must have affected the grand jury's work, which was to investigate the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.
While Bonds' former personal shopper, Kathy Hoskins, testified she saw Greg Anderson inject Bonds near the navel in 2002, she also didn't know what was in the syringe.
In the jurors' two questions to Illston last Friday - their only ones during deliberations thus far they asked to rehear a secretly recorded conversation between former Bonds business partner Steve Hoskins Kathy's brother and to have Kathy Hoskins' testimony read back. Even if the jurors determine Bonds' answers were false, they also must conclude that by lying Bonds was capable of influencing the grand jury's decision.
Bonds' case is the culmination of a federal investigation that began in 2002 into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), which distributed performance-enhancing drugs to athletes.
Ten people have been convicted in connection with the BALCO probe but only two, cyclist Tammy Thomas and track coach Trevor Graham, chose to push their cases to trial. The Bonds jury has deliberated longer than either of those panels, neither of which convicted the defendants on all counts. Thomas was convicted on four charges and acquitted on two. Graham, meanwhile, was convicted on one charge of lying to federal investigators but the jury could not reach a verdict on two other counts.
