The New York Times-20080124-Bonds-s Lawyers Use Two Tactics to Battle Charges

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Bonds's Lawyers Use Two Tactics to Battle Charges

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Barry Bonds's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss perjury charges against him Wednesday. In case that is rejected, the lawyers moved to strike parts of his indictment, describing the charges against Bonds as ambiguous, inartful, scattershot, vague and confusing.

Bonds was indicted in November on charges of lying and obstruction of justice stemming from his appearance before a federal grand jury in 2003, when he was questioned about whether he had taken steroids given by his personal trainer Greg Anderson. Last month, he pleaded not guilty.

Bonds's lawyers claim that parts of the indictment are so vague that it is simply impossible to be certain what untruths Mr. Bonds is alleged to have uttered.

They argued that the government bore a high burden of proof. Conviction requires a statement under oath which is a clearly false answer to an unambiguous question, they argued.

Robert Weisberg, a Stanford Law School professor and director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, said both sides were engaged in an incredibly careful verbal ballet. The issue, he said, will be Bonds's state of mind.

His defense could be that he didn't know he was taking a banned substance, therefore statements he made, though false, are honestly false, said Weisberg, who added that such a defense was hard to prove. His better hope he said, was for his lawyers to challenge the prosecutors' questioning of Bonds as too ambiguous or vague for his answers to have been false.

In the motion to dismiss, Bonds's lawyers claimed that two different prosecutors were frequently imprecise, redundant, overlapping and frequently compound. They said false testimony cannot be based upon an answer that is literally true, even though the answer is incomplete, misleading or nonresponsive.

Bonds's lawyers asked what the prosecutors meant when they asked Bonds if other individuals like Mr. Anderson or any associates of his had ever injected anything into Mr. Bonds. What did prosecutors mean by associate of Mr. Anderson? What if Mr. Anderson didn't know the person? The question, to which Bonds answered no, is utterly undefined and fundamentally vague, the motion states.

The lawyers also argued that multiple offenses for each count in Bonds's indictment were too vague and confusing to permit the preparation of a defense.

Even Barry Bonds cannot be expected to make contact with a fastball, slider and knuckler thrown him simultaneously, his lawyers wrote in the filing.