For all the worry about hype on the Internet, lawyers in the perjury trial of home run king Barry Bonds selected a jury Monday that is ambivalent about the former Giants superstar and relatively oblivious to the BALCO steroids scandal.
It is a panel with a few baseball fans, just a couple who favor the San Francisco Giants, but no one who would paint their faces black and orange. Most chosen said they had no opinion at all about Bonds, and scant exposure to BALCO, the defunct Peninsula lab linked to peddling performance-enhancing drugs to a wide range of professional athletes, from Olympians to baseball players.
Despite all the hoopla surrounding the trial, one juror, a Martinez woman, wrote of the Bonds and BALCO topic: "Today is the first I've heard anything at all." She was picked to consider Bonds' fate.
Bonds' trial gets under way Tuesday with opening statements and the first witnesses, and he will be judged by a jury of eight women and four men, many of whom are East Bay residents, with a few from Marin and San Francisco. The two alternates are women. The jury also is predominantly white; two of the 12 seated jurors are African-American women.
Bonds, who arrived in court Monday with his mother, friends, family and bodyguards, faces three counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury in December 2003 about using steroids. He will get his first glimpse at the government's
witnesses Tuesday, although the first witness will be his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who is expected to continue to refuse to testify and be jailed immediately for contempt by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
After Anderson, the government is expected to call Jeff Novitzky, the lead federal agent who uncovered the BALCO scandal. The next witness is scheduled to be Steve Hoskins, a former Bonds associate who tape-recorded a conversation with Anderson in the Giants locker room in 2003.
Much of the government's case against Bonds rests on the theory that Bonds lied about obtaining steroids from Anderson, who is accused of supplying them to the former Giants slugger and other ballplayers through BALCO. Bonds, 46, has denied knowingly taking steroids as he chased baseball's home run records.
Illston and the lawyers on both sides of the case spent Monday trying to sort through dozens of potential jurors, all of whom filled out lengthy questionnaires giving their views on everything from Bonds and steroids to whether they are baseball fans or have a bias against the government. The answers on the questionnaires ruled out a large number of the potential jurors from the start, and others were dismissed after being grilled in open court.
That included one former flight attendant who remarked that she is "still recovering" from working on charter flights for baseball teams early in her career, and a San Francisco man who confessed he'd have a hard time sitting on the jury and rendering "a judgment against a great athlete like Mr. Bonds."
The judge and lawyers stressed in jury selection that the case, despite its dramatic connection to steroids and baseball, centers on allegations about lying under oath to a grand jury. "You must decide the case on the evidence presented at trial," Illston told the potential jurors. "You will not be asked to decide whether you like or don't like steroids."
Many of the questions from the judge and lawyers also focused on how much pretrial publicity might have colored the views of potential jurors, taking repeated jabs at the accuracy of media accounts about the case.
But in the end, it appears all sides found jurors who have not been immersed in the eight-year legal Odyssey surrounding Bonds and BALCO. Said one juror who was chosen, a 19-year-old college student from Pinole, "My lack of interest helped me with no other knowledge regarding the proven truth."
The jury is a cross-section of ages and professions, including an engineer, two nurses, an investment firm executive and a phlebotomist, a technician trained to draw blood. On their jury questionnaires, most said they had "no opinion" about Bonds. One juror, an Antioch man, did say he has a "favorable" opinion about Bonds and is a baseball fan. But another juror, a Sonoma woman and perhaps the biggest Giants fan on the jury, said she had an "unfavorable" opinion about him.
Once the jury was selected, Illston gave them strict instructions about insulating themselves against any information about the trial, including staying away from Facebook, Google, Twitter or blogs. Earlier, in jury selection, Cristina Arguedas, one of Bonds' lawyers, asked anyone to raise their hands if they believe "we're in the age of Google," highlighting worriers about steering clear of outside information.
They all raised their hands. And one potential juror, who was later dismissed, said there would be no way to avoid the topic.
"It's impossible," he said. "I was in the grocery store last week, and two people in front of me, it's all they were talking about."
Contact Howard Mintz at hmintz@mercurynews.com or 408-286-0236.
It is a panel with a few baseball fans, just a couple who favor the San Francisco Giants, but no one who would paint their faces black and orange. Most chosen said they had no opinion at all about Bonds, and scant exposure to BALCO, the defunct Peninsula lab linked to peddling performance-enhancing drugs to a wide range of professional athletes, from Olympians to baseball players.
Despite all the hoopla surrounding the trial, one juror, a Martinez woman, wrote of the Bonds and BALCO topic: "Today is the first I've heard anything at all." She was picked to consider Bonds' fate.
Bonds' trial gets under way Tuesday with opening statements and the first witnesses, and he will be judged by a jury of eight women and four men, many of whom are East Bay residents, with a few from Marin and San Francisco. The two alternates are women. The jury also is predominantly white; two of the 12 seated jurors are African-American women.
Bonds, who arrived in court Monday with his mother, friends, family and bodyguards, faces three counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury in December 2003 about using steroids. He will get his first glimpse at the government's
witnesses Tuesday, although the first witness will be his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who is expected to continue to refuse to testify and be jailed immediately for contempt by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
After Anderson, the government is expected to call Jeff Novitzky, the lead federal agent who uncovered the BALCO scandal. The next witness is scheduled to be Steve Hoskins, a former Bonds associate who tape-recorded a conversation with Anderson in the Giants locker room in 2003.
Much of the government's case against Bonds rests on the theory that Bonds lied about obtaining steroids from Anderson, who is accused of supplying them to the former Giants slugger and other ballplayers through BALCO. Bonds, 46, has denied knowingly taking steroids as he chased baseball's home run records.
Illston and the lawyers on both sides of the case spent Monday trying to sort through dozens of potential jurors, all of whom filled out lengthy questionnaires giving their views on everything from Bonds and steroids to whether they are baseball fans or have a bias against the government. The answers on the questionnaires ruled out a large number of the potential jurors from the start, and others were dismissed after being grilled in open court.
That included one former flight attendant who remarked that she is "still recovering" from working on charter flights for baseball teams early in her career, and a San Francisco man who confessed he'd have a hard time sitting on the jury and rendering "a judgment against a great athlete like Mr. Bonds."
The judge and lawyers stressed in jury selection that the case, despite its dramatic connection to steroids and baseball, centers on allegations about lying under oath to a grand jury. "You must decide the case on the evidence presented at trial," Illston told the potential jurors. "You will not be asked to decide whether you like or don't like steroids."
Many of the questions from the judge and lawyers also focused on how much pretrial publicity might have colored the views of potential jurors, taking repeated jabs at the accuracy of media accounts about the case.
But in the end, it appears all sides found jurors who have not been immersed in the eight-year legal Odyssey surrounding Bonds and BALCO. Said one juror who was chosen, a 19-year-old college student from Pinole, "My lack of interest helped me with no other knowledge regarding the proven truth."
The jury is a cross-section of ages and professions, including an engineer, two nurses, an investment firm executive and a phlebotomist, a technician trained to draw blood. On their jury questionnaires, most said they had "no opinion" about Bonds. One juror, an Antioch man, did say he has a "favorable" opinion about Bonds and is a baseball fan. But another juror, a Sonoma woman and perhaps the biggest Giants fan on the jury, said she had an "unfavorable" opinion about him.
Once the jury was selected, Illston gave them strict instructions about insulating themselves against any information about the trial, including staying away from Facebook, Google, Twitter or blogs. Earlier, in jury selection, Cristina Arguedas, one of Bonds' lawyers, asked anyone to raise their hands if they believe "we're in the age of Google," highlighting worriers about steering clear of outside information.
They all raised their hands. And one potential juror, who was later dismissed, said there would be no way to avoid the topic.
"It's impossible," he said. "I was in the grocery store last week, and two people in front of me, it's all they were talking about."
Contact Howard Mintz at hmintz@mercurynews.com or 408-286-0236.
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