The former baseball slugger, Barry Bonds, has been sentenced by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston to two years probation, with no prison time.

Bonds received the sentence in a San Francisco federal court for his conviction on a single criminal count related to an investigation over steroids use in sports.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Bonds was also sentenced to 30 days of home confinement, 250 hours of community service, and must pay a $4,000 fine.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston handed down the sentence in a San Francisco federal court, and she immediately stayed it pending appeal. Prosecutors had sought a 15-month prison sentence, while Bonds asked for probation.

Bonds, 47, was convicted in April of obstructing a grand jury’s doping investigation with an evasive answer during a court appearance in December 2003. The Northern California jury was deadlocked on three other counts of lying to a grand jury.

Other baseball stars tainted by the doping scandal include sluggers like Jason Giambi and Mark McGwire and pitcher Roger Clemens.

Tags: Barry Bonds, baseball, doping scandal, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, steroids use in sports

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Barry Larkin, still glowing over his election to the Hall of Fame, was asked about next year’s sure-to-be-controversial vote: the first appearances of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa on the Cooperstown ballot.

“All I know is playing and competing against some of these guys, they’re the best — period,” he said.

From Online.wsj.com:

The Steroids Era will be the focal point of next year’s Hall ballot, when 550-plus members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America try to assess three of the most accomplished players in the sport’s history.

For all the home runs and wins, it’s a trio tainted with accusations that their statistics were boosted by performance-enhancing drugs during a period when there were no agreed-upon penalties in baseball for the use of steroids and human growth hormone.

“It’s going to be agonizing,” BBWAA general secretary Jack O’Connell said after Tuesday’s news conference, repeating the phrase for emphasis.

“I’m not going to vote for any of the people that are linked to steroids. I could change down the road, but that’s the real strong feeling I have now,” said Hal Bodley of MLB.com, the former lead baseball writer for USA Today.

Tags: Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin, baseball, Hall of Fame, human growth hormone, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, steroids, steroids era, use of steroids

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The perjury trial of former baseball star Roger Clemens ended in a mistrial the judge blamed on prosecutors and said a “first-year law student” would have known to avoid.

The question of a new trial up in the air was left by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton.

From Sports.yahoo.com:

“Mr. Clemens has to get a fair trial,” Walton said. “In my view, he can’t get it now.”

Defense attorney Rusty Hardin, who had asked for the mistrial declaration, patted an unsmiling Clemens on the back as the judge announced his decision. As he left the courthouse, Clemens did not comment but accepted hugs from a couple of court workers, shook hands with the security guards and autographed baseballs for fans waiting outside.

The quick end on only the second day of testimony was the second mistrial involving a superstar player accused in baseball’s steroids scandal. Home run king Barry Bonds was convicted three months ago of obstruction of justice, but a mistrial was called on three more serious false-statements charges after jurors couldn’t agree on a verdict.

Walton called a halt to the trial under way after prosecutors showed jurors evidence that he had ruled out videotaped revelations that a teammate had said he did told his wife Clemens confessed to using a drug.

Tags: Barry Bonds, baseball, Roger Clemens, steroids

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School boys as young as 17 years old participating in the recent Craven Week schools rugby tournament have tested positive for anabolic steroids.

This finding was revealed during doping control tests and the school boys could face bans of up to two years from sport.

From Timeslive.co.za:

Galant says that 4 boys tested positive for the banned steroids. “Out of the four positives, two results also showed high levels of testosterone and these tests have been sent off for further analysis to Germany to verify whether the levels of testosterone are due to external sources, or naturally produced by the body.

“Only if the tests confirm that indeed the source of testosterone is from outside of the athlete’s body, will a doping case be opened.”

He says that one positive result is a lot, therefore four positives translates into an 8.5% positive result, which is a serious cause for concern.

Khalid Galant, CEO of the Institute for Drug-Free Sport, said, “The Craven Week school tournament is known to be the hunting ground for talent scouts looking to find best new players for their provinces.”

Tags: anabolic steroids, Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens, steroids

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Prosecutors recently said that needles and cotton balls, claimed to include DNA of Roger Clemens, were faked.

The former trainer of Clemens, Brian McNamee, claimed that he used to inject the star pitcher with anabolic steroids.

From Post-gazette.com:

Assistant U.S. attorney Steven Durham revealed the results during opening arguments in Clemens’ trial on charges of lying to Congress about using performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens’ attorney Rusty Hardin responded that he won’t dispute the needles contain Clemens’ DNA and steroids, but accused the trainer Brian McNamee of “mixing” it up.

“He manufactured this stuff,” Hardin told jurors. “Roger Clemens‘ only crime was having the poor judgment to stay connected with Brian McNamee.”

Hardin said steroids would have been so “incredibly inconsistent with his career and beliefs that there’s no way he would have done it.”

Clemens has said that the only things McNamee ever injected him with were the common local anesthetic lidocaine for his joints and vitamin B-12 to ward off flu viruses and stay healthy. But Durham said neither substance was found on the needles or cotton swabbed with his blood stains.

“It’s a fact of life that sometimes when people reach the mountain, there is an unwillingness to give them equal consideration when people come down on them,” Hardin said. “And that’s what happened with Roger.”

Tags: anabolic steroids, Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens, steroids

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Federal prosecutors still care deeply about steroids, and lying about their use to Congress as the aborted Roger Clemens trial shows.

The shredded reputation of Clemens remains in limbo after last week’s mistrial in the perjury case against one of baseball’s all-time greats.

From Miamiherald.com:

Charged with lying to Congress about performance enhancing drugs, Clemens joined otherwise surefire Hall of Famers Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire as the personification of the sport’s steroid era.

Bonds’ own steroid saga is likewise on hold. Back in April, a jury convicted him of one count of obstruction of justice but deadlocked on three other charges.

So, while it’s clear federal authorities still take matters of steroid use and false statements seriously, do the rest of us?

Steroidmania, which peaked with the demolition of Major League Baseball’s home run records, has ebbed as sluggers have retired and longball totals have dropped.

The fervency is tangibly on the wane in Florida, where a testing program at the high school level was allowed to lapse after one year. There is no current plan to revive it.

“I think there’s certainly some performance-enhancing drug fatigue,” said Charles Yesalis, a professor at Penn State and longtime outspoken critic of PED abuse.

Tags: Barry Bonds, baseball, Mark McGwire, Performance enhancing drugs, Roger Clemens, steroid, steroid era, steroid use, steroids

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The mistrial in the Roger Clemens perjury trial has delivered the perfect ending to the steroid era.

The trial suggested that no one was definitively guilty and no one is undeniably innocent.

From News-sentinel.com:

Performance-enhancing baseball probably started earlier than we realize, hit its stride with the bogus Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa love fest and peaked when Barry Bonds’ head was mistaken for an entrant in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Very few elite power hitters from the performance-enhancing era emerged unscathed, with Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas and Jim Thome being the most prominent apparently clean hitters to come to mind.

Few admitted guilt. McGwire did so only in order to return to the field as Cardinals’ hitting coach. Sosa not only failed to remember any encounter with steroids, he forgot how to speak English. Andy Pettitte came clean and was largely forgiven, as was Jason Giambi. Bonds stuck to never “knowingly” using performance enhancers. Clemens denied, denied, denied.

But the era, like the Clemens trial, came to an abrupt, unsatisfying end. Now we don’t know which records are legitimate, although Bonds’ regular-season and career home-run marks will never resonate like 60 or 61, 714 or 755. Most can still recall Bonds’ 73 in a year. Do most people know his career total? I had to look it up. It’s 762.

The final unsatisfying chapter of the steroid era is all closed now.

Tags: baseball, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, steroid era, steroids

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Winner of a record seven Cy Young Awards, baseball pitching star Roger Clemens, sat silently in federal court as his trial opened on charges of perjury and obstruction of Congress.

Clemens is facing charges that carry a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

From NPR.org:

Clemens remained expressionless as the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Durham, told the jury that the government had physical proof that the 48-year-old onetime pitching ace had been repeatedly injected with anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

Clemens, whose fastball was so powerful he earned the nickname “Rocket,” is not charged with using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. Rather, it is his denial of steroid and HGH use in testimony before a House committee in 2008 that could cost him his freedom. He is charged with six different counts of perjury, making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation into the use of banned substances in baseball.

Clemens said during his congressional testimony, “I’ve been accused of something I’m not guilty of. … I’ve never taken steroids or HGH.”

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U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, the judge looking after the case of Roger Clemens, has selected 24 potential jurors from an original pool of 50 to come back Tuesday.

Clemens, the most decorated pitcher in Major League Baseball, has pleaded not guilty to charges of committing perjury, obstructing Congress, and making false statements in 2008.

From Washingtonpost.com:

None of the potential jurors probed by the judge Monday were more than casual baseball fans, though many had heard of Clemens. The second potential juror said she was a fan of European soccer.

“I have not followed baseball since the ‘80s,” she said. She was asked to come back Tuesday.

Another juror worried the defense when he said he came from a law enforcement family consisting of police officers, detectives, a sheriff and a Texas Ranger.

But the potential juror, who catered federal and Republican Party events during George W. Bush’s two terms as president, said he would be fair.

“I’m a Regular Joe, okay?” he said. “I’m going to still love baseball, no matter which way this goes.”

Clemens told a House committee that he did not use anabolic steroids and Human Growth Hormone.

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A federal judge has been asked by Major League Baseball veteran Roger Clemens to bar prosecutors from retrying him on charges that he lied to Congress.

Clemens argued that he can’t face a jury twice for the same crime under the constitution.

From Bloomberg.com:

Clemens, 48, filed a motion to dismiss the indictment against him today in U.S. district court in Washington. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ended the first trial July 14 after prosecutors showed jurors a video clip containing information he had ruled couldn’t be part of the government’s perjury and obstruction case.

Clemens’s lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said in court papers that the government’s conduct “was no accident.” He alleged the experienced prosecutors on the case had intentionally provoked a mistrial after setbacks that “cast doubt” on whether Clemens could be convicted.

Hardin, who asked for the mistrial during the second day of testimony, said, “A second trial in which the government can improve its jury selection, hone its trial strategy, and tackle issues raised by the defense in opening,” would reward the government’s misconduct and subject Clemens to an unconstitutional retrial.

Tags: Major League Baseball, Roger Clemens

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