Wow how long will the y drag this crap out.and at what expense to the tax payers who in a poll for CNN didnt even care and were discusted at the price tag of these hearings.If the government is so worried about setting a good example for the children stop doing so much corruption and the covering it up.People need to stop comparing steroids to heroin the not even close. Alot of this message comes from Mr Hoten,I am sorry his son hung himself but there was no evidence of steroids playing a role none. Congress let him testify because they used him to push the issue. His son was taking several anti depressants which are proven to cause teens to commit suicide. Lets go after them , yeah right , the pharmcutical compomponies have to much power and money. PEDs have been out since 1939 and alot of atheletes have used especially baseball players in the 50s, 60s 70s and 80s. And when they werent using PEDS they were using speed an amphetimines. So do we start questioning some of the old time greats and threatening thier families for evidence? I think they should launce a investigation into any offical who is involved in these trials and try and get any dirt on them by any means to make sure they are worthy enough to even be pointing fingers at anyone.
STARR GAZING
Mark Starr
The Steroids Trial Of The Century
Barry Bonds's perjury trial starts Monday. I don't know what the verdict will be, but I do know what the truth is. So do you.
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In September 2003 federal agents raided a San Francisco–area enterprise called BALCO, which had billed itself as the cutting edge of "high tech" nutrition for elite athletes. But the company was also providing them with a far bigger boost: steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Three months later Barry Bonds, who—along with Olympic queen Marion Jones—was the company's most famous client, appeared before a federal grand jury in San Francisco to testify about his BALCO connection.
When he arrived at the Federal Building that December morning, Bonds brushed past reporters quickly and without comment. But when he left—after more than five hours behind closed doors—he paused long enough to tell the press that things had gone fine and that he was relieved that the matter was over. It did not prove to be the most prescient of assessments. For Bonds, it was just beginning, and no matter how his BALCO tale finally plays out, nobody could suggest that his grand-jury appearance had gone well.
This Monday, the 44-year-old Bonds, the No. 1 home-run hitter in baseball history, will go on trial, charged with 10 counts of perjury, stemming from that 2003 testimony that he had never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. And as the case of Barry Bonds winds its way to some overdue conclusion, this country may be headed for another conspicuous collision between law and justice.
The prosecution has already seen the trial judge bar critical evidence seized during the BALCO raid, including three urine samples from 2000-01 that tested positive for steroids and other written materials that, prosecutors argued, linked Bonds directly to illegal drugs. Last week Judge Susan Illston ruled that evidence inadmissible unless Greg Anderson, Bonds's former personal trainer who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges and conspiracy to distribute steroids in the BALCO case, testifies about the documents and samples. Anderson, however, has become the modern face of omerta, refusing to testify against the sports hero who employed him. After serving his sentence, Anderson returned to jail for more than a year on a contempt citation for refusing to testify to the grand jury. And he has remained steadfast in his silence despite the threat that he may be sent back to jail and despite prosecutorial pressure on both his wife and his mother-in-law.
Without Bonds's trainer, the test results and these assorted documents, prosecutors will parade several dozen witnesses—including some notable athletes, who will testify about their own experience with BALCO—before the jury in an attempt to prove that Bonds is a liar. Still, regardless of the verdict, there is now a public consensus—that I share—that Bonds cheated and lied.
The Bonds saga has been a long, strange trip for all of us. Not long after the BALCO raid, when I first shared my conviction that Bonds had used illegal drugs, I was relying on common sense. That belief met the "duck" standard: if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck. Bonds looked like a man who was using performance-enhancing drugs, he performed like a man using those drugs, and he was a client of a company that was dealing those drugs. It would be revealed later that Bonds admitted to the grand jury that he apparently used steroids—the now famous "cream" and "clear"—but said that he did not knowingly use them. That a brilliant and disciplined athlete could use steroids or any other drug without knowing exactly what was going into his body or how he would be affected is preposterous.
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