Barry Bonds Case Closes With No Criminal Charges

A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in 2013 before an 11-judge panel overturned it this April.

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“Throughout this process my faith in God, along with so many who have supported me, is what has kept me going”, Bonds said in his statement, thanking fans who had backed him and his legal team.

Bonds was convicted and sentenced to 30 days of home confinement, two years of probation, 250 hours of community service in youth-related activities and a $4,000 fine after being convicted in 2011.

The 9th Circuit barred the government from retrying Bonds on the charge, leaving an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court as the Justice Department’s only long shot option to revive the conviction. The court held the answer was not “material” to the intensive federal investigation into the use of performance enhancing drugs in the San Francisco Bay area.

The court said that prosecutors hadn’t proved that Bonds had obstructed justice by giving the grand jury a rambling response in which he described himself as the “celebrity child” of a baseball-playing father.

Major League Baseball had no immediate comment on the Justice Department decision.

“The most one can say about this statement is that it was non-responsive and thereby impeded the investigation to a small degree by wasting the grand jury’s time and trying the prosecutors’ patience”, he wrote.

In his third year on the Hall ballot in 2015, Bonds received 202 votes for 36.8 percent from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Though Bonds is no longer a felon, many fans – and even some baseball peers – have concluded that he cheated by using performance-enhancing drugs.

In his 2003 testimony, Bonds admitted to the grand jury he had taken substances often known as “the clear” and “the cream” from Anderson however stated he thought they have been flaxseed oil and arthritis ointment.

Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 career home runs, surpassing Hank Aaron’s long-standing record of 755.