Mitchell Report Purports To Tattle On Steroid Users; Barry Bonds Did Not Necessarily Lie

Barry Bonds is charged with not telling the truth to Congress. He was asked if he took anabolic steroids. He replied no. Now he is indicted for lying to Congress. But did he lie? Legal Pub previously predicted the "Bond's defense" when discussing Operation Raw Deal. LINK In sum, Bonds did not lie, if he took HGH. Human Growth Hormone is not an anabolic steroid. Furthermore, it was not banned until 2005 by Major League Baseball. Recently, Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte admitted using human growth hormone while rehabbing an elbow injury. On the other hand, New York teammate Alex Rodriguez denied accusations he ever used steroids. Roger Clemens and Pettitte were both mentioned in the Thursday's Major League Baseball report on performance-enhancing drugs (Mitchell Report.) The report included information from former Yankees' trainer Brian McNamee, who served as a personal trainer to both Clemens and Pettitte until 2007. Jose Canseco was surprised to that Rodriguez's name was not on the list of players in the Mitchell Report. Ironically, neither steroids nor human growth hormone are illegal if prescribed by a physician for legitimate reasons. In Pettitte's case, if a physician legitimately prescribed steroids or HGH to speed up recovery while a player was disabled, no law was broken. When non licensed people distribute sterioids or HGH, the government calls such people drug dealers. Should HGH or Steroids be illegal? The vast majority of comments to the Operation Raw Deal article seem to indicate no. LINK. How are steroids more harmful then tobacco or alcohol products? Has America reached the point where individuals no longer have a right to choose what they put in their own body? Update 5-13-08 Barry Bonds was indicted for fourteen counts of Perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. He will have to face trial unless he enters a plea! He is still innocent until otherwise proven. Update 4-8-11: We've held up on an update because you know we hate to say we told you so.... Barry Bonds case is in the hands of the jury after the Defense chose to call no witnesses. Closing statements aren’t evidence and typically they are not all that persuasive in most cases. But they do give the audience an outline of what the lawyer's think was important during the evidence phase of trial. The prosecutor’s theme was “all he had to do was tell the truth.” But did the prosecution prove by the evidence the basis for the alleged lie? With perhaps the exception of the single charge relating to injections, did anyone testify that “Barry lied?" If Barry Bonds was a rampant steroids user who knew that what he was doing was wrong, then why didn't someone testify as such in the courtroom? The defense argued that the prosecution was a vendetta against Bonds. Prosecutio witnesses were labelled as ex-friends or scorned lovers. Bonds was definitely intended to be "made and example." Even if Bonds was not completely truthful, a guilty verdict may seem excessive given the relative insignificance of performance enhancing drugs. What real significance is there that a baseball player took performance enhancing drugs when thousands of weekend weight lifters regularly take supplements without any real threat of prosecution? BALCO was already punished. Bonds' testimony did not negatively effect the prosecution of the "dealers." Kathy Hoskins testified she saw Bonds injected. But that alone does not prove that Bonds knew the injection contained an illegal steroid. In the end, was this trial much to do about nothing? Is it really so important to destroy every American sports hero? The jury will tell the world real soon.