The well-oiled legal machine for the reigning home run king cited typographical errors in a motion filed Thursday to dismiss perjury and obstruction of justice charges alleging Bonds lied when he testified before a federal grand jury he never knowingly used performance enhancers.
Bonds says that the government’s mistakes jeopardize his right to a fair trial.
According to the Associated Press, “The typographical errors showed up in a recent filing by prosecutors wrongly accusing Bonds of flunking a drug test in 2001. They later admitted they instead meant 2000. The mistakes were corrected the next day, but Bonds' lawyers argue in their response to the government's filing that the damage to the case was already done.”
"As is always the case, many more prospective jurors will have read the original story than the retraction," wrote Dennis Riordan and Donald Horgan, two of Bonds' six attorneys.
“Bonds' attorneys also signaled in Thursday's filing that they intend to attack the credibility of the November 2000 test results, which were seized in 2003 when the government raided the now-defunct Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, headquarters of a drug ring that peddled steroids to numerous elite athletes,” the AP reported.
Victor Conte, BALCO founder, said the test was done “quick and dirty,” and there’s no way of knowing who handled Bonds' urine and blood samples in the three years that elapsed between the test and federal seizure.
"Mr. Bonds vigorously disputes that the government possesses any credible or admissible evidence that he had a positive test for steroid use in either November 2000 or November 2001," Bonds' lawyers stated.
The U.S. Attorney’s office had no comment Thursday. On Feb. 15, spokesman Josh Eaton said the typos were unintentional.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is slated to hear arguments on Bonds' motion for dismissal on Feb. 29.
Read the full indictment here: http://assets.espn.go.com/media/pdf/071115/bonds.pdf
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