According to reports, a federal appeals court upheld Major League Baseball home run king Barry Bonds' 2011 conviction for obstruction of justice in his testimony to a federal grand jury during the Balco steroids scandal by a unanimous vote from three judges.
According to The San Jose Mercury News, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn't accept Bonds' argument that the jury instructions tainted his verdict. Bonds was hoping to argue that his testimony was not an obstruction of justice because he was misled by the instructions.
Bonds has been embattled in legal drama for the past decade after he denied taking performance enhancing drugs while being probed by a grand jury during the Balco scandal, but was evasive during questioning.
"We conclude there was sufficient evidence to convict Bonds of obstructing justice," 9th Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder wrote for the court, according to The San Jose Mercury News.
The court decided to keep Bonds' felony conviction intact for providing a misleading testimony and avoiding questioning. Bonds was slapped with the obstruction of justice charge in April of 2011 after he tried to avoid a line of questioning that had to do with whether or not his former personal trainer Greg Anderson had injected him with steroids as he chased baseball's home run record or at any time in his career.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that Bonds had a rambling answer when he was asked directly about whether or not Anderson ever gave him steroids, and even said he was a "celebrity child with a famous father," to avoid the questions rather than answer them. Bonds and his legal team then challenged that the testimony was too broad to fall under the category of obstruction of justice, but the 9th Circuit upheld the charges.
"The statement served to divert the grand jury's attention away from the relevant inquiry of the investigation, which was Anderson and Balco's distribution of steroids and PEDs," the court wrote, per the San Jose Mercury News, which reported that Bonds was hoping to set aside his felony conviction and two years' probation with a one month electronic monitoring of his home. "The statement was therefore evasive."
Bonds, who retired in 2007, has become one of the most controversial figures in baseball history, and became the MLB's all-time leader in homers in 2001 when he went deep 73 times. In his 22-year career, Bonds played in 2,986 games while blasting 762 homers and knocking in 1,996 RBIs and finishing with a career batting average of .298.
Bonds leads the majors in all-time homers with 762.
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