San Francisco, CA (My Sportsbook) - Barry Bonds has been sentenced to 30 days house arrest and probation for committing obstruction of justice during his 2003 grand jury testimony in the BALCO steroids case.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on Friday sentenced Bonds to house arrest, two years of probation, 250 hours of community service and a $4,000 fine.
The sentencing likely brings an end to a legal case more than four years old, a case born of testimony given eight years ago.
He was originally indicted in November 2007, but an appeal over evidence and subsequent motions set the start date of his trial back several years to March.
Bonds, now 47 years old, owns some of the highest-profile all-time records in baseball, including 73 home runs hit in 2001 with the Giants and 762 career homers.
He is a seven-time MVP, eight-time Gold Glove winner, 14-time All-Star and two-time batting champion. His final season ended a little more than a month before he was indicted.
Friday's sentencing provides a somewhat anticlimactic end to a high-profile case that involved one of the highest-profile and legendary players in baseball history.
Moreover, Friday's conclusion was seemingly at odds with how high-profile the case was when it began.
His original trial date of February 2009 was delayed when prosecutors appealed a ruling to exclude key evidence -- specifically, alleged positive tests from Bonds and evidence of those tests. Prosecutors lost that appeal, but decided to go ahead with the trial.
Bonds had faced 11 felony charges, but federal prosecutors slashed six of them in February, and Illston dismissed one of the perjury charges.
That left the count of obstruction of justice and three perjury charges -- that Bonds lied when he denied knowingly receiving steroids from his trainer Greg Anderson, denied getting injections of human growth hormone from Anderson, and that he only received injections from physicians.
But the jury did not reach a verdict on those charges, and a mistrial was declared on those counts. The federal government decided to drop those charges.
Bonds' lawyers appealed the conviction on the obstruction of justice count, but Illston upheld the ruling and denied a request for a new trial in late August.
