Jurors weigh fate of Barry Bonds for third day
SAN FRANCISCO - The jurors weighing the Barry Bonds perjury case have returned for a third day of deliberations.
The eight women and four men closed the door to the jury room Tuesday morning and will again try to reach a verdict on the four charges pending against Bonds.
The jury failed to decide the matter after deliberating all day Friday and Monday.
Bonds, the all-time and single-seanon homerun king, is charged with three counts of lying to a grand jury in 2003 and one count of obstruction. Prosecutors allege that Bonds lied when he denied knowingly taking steroids and human growth hormone. A third count of making a false statement alleges that Bonds lied when he said that no one other than his doctor ever injected him with anything.
The fourth charge is a catchall count of obstruction, which alleges that MLB's all-time home runs leader hindered the grand jury's sports doping investigation by lying.
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For those trying to get a peek into the jury's thoughts, the panel has made requests to rehear two pieces of evidence that both center on the injection count.
On Friday, the jurors asked to hear a replay of the 2003 secret recording made by former Bonds business partner Steve Hoskins in which Anderson talks about injecting the slugger. Before the resumption of deliberations Monday, the panel spent 71 minutes hearing a clerk read back the March 31 testimony of Bonds' former personal shopper Kathy Hoskins — Steve's sister. She testified that she saw Anderson inject Bonds near the navel in 2002, becoming the only one of 25 witnesses at the trial to claim firsthand knowledge of Bonds being injected.
"This was very damaging testimony that contrasted starkly with his denials of steroid use that are the heart of this perjury case," said legal observer Joshua Berman, a former prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney in Washington D.C.
However, it's impossible to discern how many of the 12 jurors are focusing on that testimony and whether they feel the injection answer was material, or in layman's terms, important, to the grand jury's investigation. To convict Bonds of making a false statement, the jury must find both that what Bonds said was a lie and one that had an effect on the grand jury.
Anderson was jailed during the trial because he refused to testify. No witnesses said they personally saw Bonds receive drugs
Kathy Hoskins said she did not ask what was in the syringe Anderson used on Bonds.
Now 46, Bonds testified before the grand jury that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs, and that Anderson told him he was using flaxseed oil and arthritic balm — not designer steroids that were undetectable at the time.
Most of the jurors scribbled notes when Hoskins' testimony about the injection was read back. Bonds, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, kept an eye on the jurors during early portions of the reading, then focused on the clerk.
Just before the jury finished for the day at 3:45 p.m., lead Bonds lawyer Allen Ruby was in the hallway outside the courtroom, wondering when deliberations would be recessed.
