With Silence, Bonds’s Trainer Risks More Than Jail Time

SAN FRANCISCO — Greg Anderson, the childhood friend and former trainer of Barry Bonds, went to jail Tuesday for refusing to testify in Bonds’s perjury trial. For Anderson, it is nothing new.

The federal judge presiding over the case ordered him into custody for the fourth time in the past five years for contempt of court. He will remain there for the duration of the trial, which could last as long as four weeks.

If Anderson changes his mind, Judge Susan Illston of United States District Court said that he would be freed. But if he does not, some legal experts say Anderson is headed for even bigger trouble based on his repeated reluctance to take the stand.

They say Anderson — who spent three months in prison in 2005 for conspiracy to distribute steroids and for money laundering in connection to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative steroids case — may face his most serious charge yet: obstruction of justice. That charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.

“I have absolute confidence that Greg Anderson will be charged with obstruction of justice when the Bonds trial is over,” said Rory Little, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. “It’s very uncommon to have someone who is willing to go to jail for months for no direct promise of payback from the defendant. And the government doesn’t take intentional obstruction of justice lightly.”

Read the rest here.