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San Francisco Giants slugger and current Major League Baseball home run king Barry Bonds was indicted by a grand jury for perjury and obstruction of justice today. The charges stem from an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball over the past decades.
I don't put much stock in grand jury indictments. Grand juries are, at the end of the day, easily manipulated tools of prosecutors, who generally don't have any real agenda that involves abstract issues like truth and justice. The old saw that a grand jury can be convinced to indict a ham sandwich is not far from the truth. The defendant has no rights, even the right to legal counsel, during a grand jury proceeding and the entire process is under the control of prosecutors.
There are numerous issues here, including the question of how the prosecutor is going to prove Bonds knew he was taking the drugs (if in fact he was). He has consistently claimed he did not "knowingly" take the substances. There's also the additional complication of the question of whether their use constitutes a crime given baseball's lack of action and policy.
No doubt this ends Bonds' career, but whether it will ultimately be possible for prosecutors to convict him -- a conviction that would probably keep him out of the Hall of Fame -- remains to be seen.
I predict a lot of long, drawn-out negotiations ending in a plea deal in which Bonds doesn't plead guilty.
