The recent decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the admission of new evidences against the baseball slugger Barry Bonds is another blow to the prosecution. The Appeals Court agreed with the ruling of the district Court that new evidences can’t be presented in the perjury case without the testimony of Barry Bonds former trainer. The case filed against Bonds in December 2007 was in relation to his alleged lying to a federal inquiry about his use of performance enhancing drugs.

Bonds could be facing up to 5 years in prison for each of the 14 counts of perjury. He was also charged with obstruction of justice and temporarily released for $500,000 personal recognizance bond. Bonds maintained his position that he never took any performance enhancing drugs and he did not lied to the grand jury.

Although the prosecution was able to get concrete evidences that will prove Bonds was involved in the use of banned substances while playing in the Major League, they can’t pin down the slugger for some technicality. They want to include in the case the urine samples, diaries and schedules detailing Bonds’ steroid use. These evidences were allegedly kept by Anderson. However, Greg Anderson refused to testify against Bonds during the preliminary hearing.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, who handles the case, ruled that the prosecutors for the federal government could not present the evidence without corroborating testimony from Anderson. The decision of the trainer not to testify caused him to spend some time in jail. In the previous interviews, the trainer still maintains his decision not to talk about Bonds’ use of performance enhancing drugs.

Bonds was one of the players aside from Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi who were called during the BALCO investigation in 2003. He categorically denied that he took any anabolic steroids, testosterone or human growth hormone. Moreover, Bonds insisted that he was never injected any of these banned substances from the period of 2000 up to 2002. Anderson was also implicated in the investigation and Victor Conte, the founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative was also jailed for illegal distribution and sale of designer steroids. Conte is also fighting his case against Shane Mosley who was also one of his former clients.

Barry Bonds broke the home run records with 762 homers. He took a leave from the sport when charges were filed against him. His previous team is optimistic that Bonds will be back soon preferably as a coach. The impressive record of the former Giants had a very little chance of being included into the Hall of Fame because of his alleged steroid use.

Now that the case is remanded to the district court, Bonds’ camp could be seeing a clear victory in the perjury case. However, this may not happen too soon since the prosecution can still go to the Supreme Court and ask for a final decision on the issue.

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