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| Barry Bonds' judge tackles last of BALCO case |
| By rgj.com |
| Published: 03/21/2011 |
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds' lawyers and federal prosecutors bickered at length during a recent hearing about the admissibility of a Playboy interview and photo spread of Kimberly Bell, the slugger's former mistress. When the issue came up, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston looked out at a packed courtroom and sighed. She's earned a reputation as dignified and unflappable over 16 years on the bench, but at times the buildup to Bonds' perjury trial has tested even her patience. Illston comes to the Bonds case, which starts with jury selection today, having handled an enormous variety of legal issues. She's sentenced child pornographers to prison. She's overruled the Bush administration by barring off-road vehicles in the Mojave Desert. She's presided over a novel human rights trial in which Nigerian villagers were demanding billions from Chevron Corp. after accusing it of backing the deadly military putdown of a protest against the oil giant. Illston has kept a matter-of-fact demeanor through it all. But when prosecutors announced in 2009, as the Bonds trial neared, that they were appealing an important ruling of hers barring critical evidence, the judge didn't hide her anger. She lectured the government lawyers about how disruptive and expensive their appeal was to a court that was fully geared up to accommodate a media circus. Yet, in the first hearing after the prosecutors lost that appeal, Illston neither gloated nor mentioned her vindication. It was business as usual again for a case that has dragged on since Bonds' indictment in 2007 -- and really since 2003, when the first of the sports Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) doping cases were assigned to her courtroom. Since the new year began, the Bonds case has generated a blizzard of legal motions in the run up to today's trial. The slugger is accused of making false statements to a grand jury and obstructing justice by saying that he never knowingly took performance- Read More. |
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