Barry Bonds Don’t Deserve Purnishment

EIGHT F*CKING YEARS. That’s how long federal prosecutors spent trying to throw Barry Bonds in the slammer for 12 counts of perjury and obstruction of justice and whatever else they had a boner over. So when the verdict came down last week, what did the millions of dollars of taxpayer money get us? Guilty on four counts to the tune of a $4,000 fine, home confinement for 30 days and two years of probation. Oh, and he has to do 250 hours of community service.

Let justice be done though thy heaven’s fall.

A lawyer for Bonds, Allen Ruby, asked by reporters which side he thought had come out ahead in the sentencing, said: “It depends on whether justice was done. If justice was done, then everyone’s a winner. As to what we think, we’re not talking.”

The prosecutors in the case declined comment immediately afterward. But in court, assistant United States attorney Matthew A. Parrella took issue with Illston once it became clear from her presentence comments that there would be no jail term.

In response to her comment that Bonds’s obstruction of justice was a departure from an “otherwise law-abiding lifestyle,” Parrella said Bonds was “well versed in misleading people” and cited the illegal use of drugs and “mistresses through two marriages.”

“He wasn’t convicted for any of those,” Illston responded.

(Via the New York Times)

Ah, the old “He cheated on his wife so he must be a criminal” strategy. Pure brilliance. I’d love to expound on my outrage that tens and maybe hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by the government on trying to prove that Bonds used steroids when any person with a working set of eyes could figure that out, but I’ve already been distracted by the most compelling argument.

After the jump, meet the Barry Bonds fan who puts our whole legal system to shame.