SAN FRANCISCO — Barry Bonds, baseball’s home run
king, was sentenced Friday to two years’ probation with home
confinement, plus a $4,000 fine, for giving evasive testimony to a
federal grand jury eight years ago during an investigation of doping in
sports.
Bonds, 47, was charged with several counts of perjury
and obstruction of justice for lying during the grand jury’s probe of
the Burlingame, Calif.-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO,
which sold banned substances to athletes.
A trial jury last April deadlocked on the perjury
charges, returning only one conviction for felony obstruction. Jurors
said Bonds obstructed justice by being intentionally evasive in his
testimony.
Federal sentencing guidelines recommend 15 to 21
months in prison for obstruction, but probation officials told Judge
Susan Illston that Bonds’ offense warranted much less: two years’
probation, a $4,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and “location
monitoring” or home confinement.
Probation officials cited Bonds’ history of
charitable and civic works — works that Bonds’ attorneys said he kept
private even though they would have enhanced his reputation.
Prosecutors countered that the former San Francisco
Giants star deserved 15 months in prison for his “pervasive efforts to
testify falsely, to mislead the grand jury, to dodge questions, and to
simply refuse to answer questions in the grand jury.”
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