A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court heard arguments from lawyers and prosecutors for Barry Bonds on whether the prosecutors should be allowed to use positive steroid drug tests as evidence at perjury trial of Bonds.

Bonds was indicated in 2007 on charges that he lied before a grand jury about his use of performance enhancing drugs during BALCO investigations.

From Nytimes.com:

The prosecutors are appealing a ruling in February by United States District Judge Susan Illston, the judge presiding over Bonds’s perjury case, that excluded the drug tests from 2000 and 2001, as well as doping calendars and logs. The judge said the evidence could not be authenticated without the testimony of Bonds’s former trainer Greg Anderson, who spent more than a year in prison refusing to cooperate with the government’s investigation.

At issue on Thursday was whether the evidence could be authenticated without Anderson’s testimony. Prosecutors want James Valente, a former executive at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, to testify that Bonds authorized Anderson to have the samples tested. The defense said that drug tests are often wrong because of forgeries and lies, and that secondhand information from Valente should not be admissible.

Peter Keane, a professor at Golden Gate University School of Law, remarked that the government has a “stiff climb” since appeals courts are generally reluctant to overrule a trial judge ruling on evidence admissibility, especially before a trial.

Tags: BALCO, Barry Bonds, Performance enhancing drugs, steroid drug

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