Barry Bonds prosecutors abandon appeal

LOS ANGELES, United States – The US Department of Justice formally dropped efforts to prosecute Major League Baseball’s disgraced home run king Barry Bonds on Tuesday. He avoided a perjury conviction, but was found guilty of obstruction for a roundabout answer when asked about his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, and if he ever injected Bonds with steroids.

The decade-long investigation and prosecution of Bonds for obstruction of justice ended quietly with the DOJ’s one-paragraph court filing announcing it would not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a lower court’s reversal of his felony conviction. “I am relieved, humbled and thankful for what this means for me and my family moving forward”. But he was caught in the middle of baseball’s BALCO performance-enhancing drug scandal in the early 2000s.

This effectively ends Bonds’ decade-long criminal prosecution after he testified before a grand jury in 2003 about whether he used steroids to help him hit more long balls.

“The finality of today’s decision gives me great peace”, Bonds wrote in a blog post. In addition, the slugger was convicted on one obstruction charge in 2011, and the jury deadlocked on three perjury charges. “I just don’t get into other people’s business because of my father’s situation, you see”. The court said the answer wasn’t “material” to the sprawling federal investigation into sports doping centered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bonds’ answer to that led to all of this legal action?

Despite that, he has not come close to being elected into the Hall of Fame due to his PED ties.

Bonds served his sentence, 30 days of home confinement, while he awaited his appeal.

With that 10-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered an overwhelming blow to the government’s high-profile, oft-sidetracked case against the former San Francisco Giant, accused of lying to the grand jury about using steroids as he chased baseball’s home run records.