In a one-paragraph court filing, the DOJ announced that it would not attempt to pursue a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a lower court’s reversal of a felony conviction.
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The legal saga of former San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds, accused eight years ago of perjury and obstruction in a steroids investigation, came to an official end Tuesday. The all-time Major League Baseball home run leader had been convicted of obstruction of justice in 2011, but a federal appeals court later overturned the conviction. But he was acquitted on all perjury counts at the original trial and the obstruction of justice ruling was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals in April.
Bonds ended his career after the 2007 season with 762 career home runs, surpassing Hank Aaron’s long-standing record of 755.
The finality of today’s decision gives me great peace.
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.
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.
The Department of Justice ended their decade-long investigation of Bonds for obstruction of justice. He was indicted in 2007 and a jury convicted him in 2011 for his response to the question of whether trainer Greg Anderson provided him with “anything that required a syringe to inject yourself with”. But now, if we say “Barry Bonds committed no crimes”, we can know that the Feds agree – or at least that they didn’t feel his crimes were worth allocating any more taxpayer money toward.
“That’s what keeps our friendship”, Bonds said at the time.
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Bonds has already served his sentence of one month of home confinement and 250 hours of community service. Thank you to all of you who have expressed your heartfelt wishes to me; for that, I am grateful.
