SAN FRANCISCO – The judge in the Barry Bonds perjury case could find BALCO prosecutors, investigators or officials in contempt if evidence connects them to the leak of formerly anonymous 2003 Major League baseball drug tests that resulted in allegations that Alex Rodriguez took steroids.
A source familiar with the proceedings between the government and MLB players union said, “It is not possible this was leaked without there being a violation of the law.”
Two former prosecutors said it was likely that Judge Susan Illston, who is presiding over the Bonds case, would order contempt hearings. The Rodriguez disclosure is especially serious because Illston and other federal judges had ruled that this was “information [the government] wasn’t entitled to,” said Charles La Bella, a former U.S. Attorney who practices criminal defense in San Diego. “It’s unfair to tarnish an individual based on that illegally seized information.”
On Saturday, Sports Illustrated cited “two sources familiar with the evidence that the government has gathered” in the BALCO investigation and “two other sources with knowledge of the testing results” in reporting that Rodriguez tested positive for the steroid Primobolan and testosterone.
The records pertaining to Rodriguez and others are part of a case involving Comprehensive Drug Testing (CDT), the Long Beach, Calif., lab that performed much of MLB’s testing in 2003 and was subject to a government raid in April 2004. The case has several links to the Bonds case and to the seven-year probe into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).
Among the evidence against Bonds is a positive drug re-test that originated from urine samples taken during MLB’s survey testing in 2003, the same tests that allegedly produced Rodriguez’s positive result.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_y...B?slug=li-arodlegal020909&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
A source familiar with the proceedings between the government and MLB players union said, “It is not possible this was leaked without there being a violation of the law.”
Two former prosecutors said it was likely that Judge Susan Illston, who is presiding over the Bonds case, would order contempt hearings. The Rodriguez disclosure is especially serious because Illston and other federal judges had ruled that this was “information [the government] wasn’t entitled to,” said Charles La Bella, a former U.S. Attorney who practices criminal defense in San Diego. “It’s unfair to tarnish an individual based on that illegally seized information.”
On Saturday, Sports Illustrated cited “two sources familiar with the evidence that the government has gathered” in the BALCO investigation and “two other sources with knowledge of the testing results” in reporting that Rodriguez tested positive for the steroid Primobolan and testosterone.
The records pertaining to Rodriguez and others are part of a case involving Comprehensive Drug Testing (CDT), the Long Beach, Calif., lab that performed much of MLB’s testing in 2003 and was subject to a government raid in April 2004. The case has several links to the Bonds case and to the seven-year probe into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO).
Among the evidence against Bonds is a positive drug re-test that originated from urine samples taken during MLB’s survey testing in 2003, the same tests that allegedly produced Rodriguez’s positive result.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_y...B?slug=li-arodlegal020909&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
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