Barry Bonds’ defense team got five of the 15 pending charges dismissed against their client, and for the controversial slugger, that’s way better than scoring several home runs.

From AP:

Home run champion Barry Bonds won a reduction of the criminal charges against him Monday when a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed five of the 15 pending counts.

Bonds, 44, is due to go on trial in March in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on charges of making false statements and obstructing justice in 2003 grand jury testimony in a sports steroids probe.

The former San Francisco Giants slugger is accused of lying when he denied ever receiving anabolic steroids or human growth hormone.

In a pretrial ruling, Illston granted a request by Bonds’ six defense lawyers for dismissal of five of the false statements counts on the grounds they were legally defective.

The judge found that two counts duplicated other counts, two were based on ambiguous questions or answers and one other charge contained a typo in which prosecutors left out a key word.

The home run king, however, is still facing 10 criminal counts and that number could reach 11 since prosecutors are seeking a new indictment, intending to correct the charge containing the typo.

Each of the criminal counts carries a potential maximum penalty of five years in prison; however, some legal observers say Bonds could get a lesser sentence with just 2 ½ years in prison.

Illston is known to hand lenient verdicts, such as in the case of cyclist Tammy Thomas. The judge sentenced Thomas to six months in home confinement, not anywhere near the 2 ½ -year prison term prosecutors had sought.

Tags: anabolic steroids, Barry Bonds, human growth hormone, MLB, steroids, Steroids in Baseball, Susan Illston, Tammy Thomas

Posted in steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Baseball, Steroids in Sports