OK, he's not in jail. But "Free Barry" is more catchy than "Exonerate Barry". I understand that judges are reluctant to undo the "verdict" of a jury, however they are not averse to reversing what they see as jury mistakes that result in a perceived miscarriage of justice. That is what seems to have happened here.
It would seem like the trick here may be for the appeals court to undo the verdict without bruising the reputation of the presiding judge who, from all accounts, did a fair job in administering the trial.
Given the news reports yesterday that MLB may have approved of A-Rod's use of testosterone in 2007, this is not a good last couple of days for MLB as it relates to the steroid era.
from Bleacher Report:
'via Blog this'At specific issue is whether it’s OK for prosecutors to get an obstruction of justice conviction based on statements that were not held to be perjury. Which is what happened in this case. You may recall that Bonds, under oath gave a long, rambling answer about whether he had ever been injected with drugs, famously going on about how he was “a celebrity child” before finally answering in the negative. The prosecution basically double-charged Bonds for that statement, first with perjury and then with obstruction. The jury decided that was not perjury and acquitted him on that count. They did, however, hold that it was obstruction. The 9th Circuit apparently wants to reconsider whether that’s kosher.As we noted at length at the time of the conviction, the idea that Bonds’ answer, however rambling it was, constituted obstruction of justice, is a joke. Bonds may have riffed for a few moments, but soon after he directly answered a yes-or-no question with a “no.” A “no” that the jury decided was not a lie. There aren’t many criminal cases in the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence in which a testifying target of a grand jury investigation did not, at least for a moment, try to fudge his way out answering a question. One of the first things you’re taught in law school is that it’s your job as the lawyer to rein the witness in and get him to answer. The prosecutor eventually did that here. And then the prosecutor decided to literally make a federal case out of the fact that a witness rambled for a minute, calling it obstruction of justice. The jury, it’s worth noting, thought it was a joke too, but they felt their hands were tied.
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