Barry Bonds gets two-year probation, plus house arrest

SAN FRANCISCO – Barry Bonds won't see the inside of a jail. Instead, he may have to spend a month confined to his mansion -- if that.

Baseball's all-time home run leader was sentenced today to two years' probation and 30 days of house arrest for his April 13 felony conviction of obstructing justice, stemming from charges that he intentionally misled a 2003 grand jury investigating the BALCO steroids scandal. Bonds was also fined $4,000 and ordered to perform 250 hours of community service.

The sentence was stayed pending an appeal of the conviction by the defense.

After spending eight years and untold resources trying to penalize Bonds for allegedly lying under oath about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, prosecutors were clearly disappointed about the light sentence.

Federal guidelines call for 15-21 months in jail as punishment, and prosecutors had requested that Bonds be sentenced to 15 months, but U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston followed the recommendations of the probation officer in handing out a lesser penalty.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella argued that Bonds' behavior warranted jail time, saying he was "unrepentant, unapologetic.''

Illston disagreed. She listed four reasons provided by probation officer James Schloetter for choosing a lesser sentence than the guidelines recommend.

They were:

• The attempt to obstruct justice was not done in a blatant or threatening manner.
• Bonds has performed considerable charitable work away from the public eye.
• Bonds has no prior record of arrest or conviction, suggesting this offense was an aberration.
• The sentence should be consistent with previous punishment doled out for similar crimes.

"No surprise today in Mr. Bonds' probation sentence,'' said William Keane, a white-collar crime lawyer who defended former track coach Trevor Graham in the BALCO case.

"Given this judge's prior probation sentences in the BALCO false-statement and obstruction cases, and the fact that there was nothing about Bonds' case to make it an outlier, the judge stayed the course she had set long ago."

Illston had shown a reluctance to punish secondary figures in the BALCO case any more harshly than the principals, such as lab co-founder Victor Conte and Bonds' former trainer, Greg Anderson. Conte was sentenced to four months in prison and Anderson to three months, both for distributing steroids.

Former champion cyclist Tammy Thomas, Graham and NFL player Dana Stubblefield all were sentenced to probation, some with house arrest as well, for lying to a grand jury or to federal investigators in the BALCO case.

A jury of eight women and four men had found Bonds guilty of attempting to mislead the grand jury by giving evasive answers to prosecutors' questions about his alleged use of steroids.

The jury deadlocked on three other counts of perjury, which were subsequently dropped.

"I think the jury got it exactly right here that Mr. Bonds made an effort to obstruct justice,'' Illston said.

Nonetheless, Bonds' defense team plans to appeal.

"We absolutely believe Barry was wrongly convicted of a felony offense,'' defense attorney Dennis Riordan said. "At the moment he is branded a felon, we think unjustly, and just as we aggressively fought the case at trial, we intend to fight it on appeal and overcome that judgment.''

Bonds' sentence was supposed to put an end to a saga that began Sept., 3, 2003, when federal agents raided the offices of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative in Burlingame, just south of San Francisco, seeking evidence of illegal steroid distribution.

The case brought to light widespread use of performance-enhancing substances among elite athletes and led to a strengthening of anti-doping policies in several sports, most notably Major League Baseball.