Bonds Arrives at Court in San Francisco
It was wonderful to read how the mainstream media in the United States spun last week’s Barry Bonds sentencing.
Here’s AP’s take: “SAN FRANCISCO — Eight years of being investigated for steroid allegations ended for home run king Barry Bonds on Friday with a 30-day sentence to be served at home. No more – and maybe less.
“U.S. District Judge Susan Illston immediately delayed imposing the sentence while Bonds appeals his obstruction of justice conviction. The former baseball star was found guilty in April not of using steroids, but of misleading grand jurors.
“Even without prison time, the case has left its mark on the seven-time National League MVP. His 762 career home runs, and 73 homers in 2001, may forever be seen as tainted records, and his ticket to baseball’s Hall of Fame is in doubt.”
A guy virtually gets off what could have been 15-month-five-year sentence and the media is more concerned about whether or not the guy is going to get into the Hall of Fame. That’s all the big U.S. media had left.
There was no mention of Illston’s obvious determination that Bonds did virtually nothing wrong. While the American media and what was left of the old Bush Justice System screamed for the guy’s head, Illston calmly brought down a sentence that doesn’t even rate as punishment — for anything. And she did it because she still isn’t certain Bonds did anything wrong.
In total, Bonds was sentenced to two years of probation, 250 hours of community service, a $4,000 fine and 30 days of home confinement. According to AP, “It will take time to determine whether he serves any of it (or pays even a nickel); his appellate specialist, Dennis Riordan, estimated it would take nearly a year and a half for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule.”
The assistant U.S. attorney, a beaten man named Matthew Parrella, who so doggedly wanted Bonds to go to jail forever for allegedly using steroids and cheating on his wife (honestly), called the sentence “a slap on the wrist.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella called the sentence a “slap on the wrist” and then told reporters outside the court room: “The fine was almost laughable for a superstar athlete who made more than $192 million for playing baseball.”
Parrella wanted Bonds to serve 15 months in federal prison and told Ilston, “Home confinement isn’t punishment enough for a man with a 15,000-square-foot house with all the advantages.”
By the way, Bonds owns a six-bedroom, 10-bath home with a gym and a pool.
In other words, the judge said “you idiots have all wasted your time.” The feds chased Bonds for eight years and spent 10s of millions on dollars on “the case.” And what was the case? That Bonds used steroids? No, that he lied to a grand jury about it.
In hundreds of cases during the 2000s, federal justice officials in the United States could never a get a conviction on the charges that were brought into court. So they chased people down with “the lying to the grand jury” chestnut. Parrella and his ilk had nothing on Bonds after wasting millions and millions in taxpayers’ money so they went after him for lying to the grand jury.
In the end Parrella was so apoplectic about Bonds that he threw a temper tantrum in front of reporters. He looked and sounded cartoonish as he ripped Bonds for everything he couldn’t prove and things that aren’t even against the law. He sounded like a nine-year-old who didn’t get his way.
Bonds and Second Wife Liz Watson
“The defendant basically lived a double life for decades before this,” Parrella told the court. “He used performance-enhancing drugs and had mistresses throughout his marriages. He made all that money because he used steroids and he has been unrepentant and unapologetic about it.”
Illston virtually laughed at Parrella. “He wasn’t convicted of adultery,” she snapped.
Illston told the court that the alleged use of steroids and the way Bonds lived his personal life had nothing to do with the sentencing. She said she agreed with a probation department report that called Bonds’ conviction an “aberration” in his life. She said she received dozens of letters in support of Bonds, some discussing how he has given money and time “for decades” to charitable causes.
And did that ever piss off the U.S. media.
At the end of the AP story, the reporters wrote of Bonds and Roger Clemens, whose first trial was tossed out of court because the idiot prosecutors used evidence they knew was inadmissable: “Both men will face a different judgment day in 2013, when they’ll be eligible for the Hall of Fame.”
Bonds Near the End of his Career.
It sounded like a threat. The Baseball Writers Association of America — the same buffoons who refused to say a discouraging word about any of the steroid use in baseball while it was going on — couldn’t get Bonds convicted, so now they’ll do what they’ve done to everyone else they’ve perceived to have used steroids (they really don’t have any idea that anyone used it unless someone has admitted to it) and should be eligible for the Hall of Fame. They’ve gone out of their way to keep them out.
Lester Munson, the Republican lawyer who works for ESPN, nearly wet his pants: “The federal judge who presided over the Bonds trial is Susan Illston. She is a San Francisco Democrat and a bit of an enigma… It was one of many decisions made in the course of the BALCO prosecutions that indicated Judge Illston just didn’t get it.” Yes she did. She ‘got it’ completely.
Munson wanted Bonds convicted and sentenced to life so badly that he lost all objectivity. If you listen to Munson enough, you realize he’s one of these ideologues who believes that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. He also gets pissy when a judge doesn’t agree with his pre-determined assessment.
Look, Bonds is probably guilty of using steroids (at a time when it wasn’t against the rules of in baseball). He obviously lied to somebody because he was convicted of it. The problem was, the United States government, the one that Republicans claim is flat broke, spent millions and millions of dollars over eight years on a blind, pointless witch hunt designed to destroy somebody who did nothing more — or less — than play baseball in the Steroid Era.
Who cares if Bonds was convicted and who cares that he wasn’t sentenced to years in the joint? At this stage, eight years after the witch hunt began, the entire exercise was proven to be a meaningless waste of effort that did nothing except make a pile of lawyers richer than they were at the start.