Bonds Perjury Charges Breed, Multiply, Threaten To Overrun Small Town

One reason that no team wants to take a chance on signing Barry Bonds: The perjury counts from his BALCO grand jury testimony seem to be splitting like amoebas. On Monday he had four counts of perjury, and on Tuesday it suddenly became 14. As any biology teacher will tell you, that's reproduction by binary fission ... who knows where it will end? By June there could be millions of counts, and perhaps a new mammal species.

Bonds' legal team objected to technical flaws in the original indictment. By law, the government can accuse a defendant of only one crime per count of an indictment. Bonds lawyer Dennis Riordan contended that the indictment accused Bonds of telling as many as five lies in a single perjury count. Judge Susan Illston agreed, and ordered the government to rewrite the document. The new indictment broke each of the old perjury charges into multiple new ones.

This actually changes nothing, really. Bonds still faces a maximum of 30 months in jail if found guilty on all counts, same as before. It's just that now, all the counts are proportioned in smaller, bite-sized pieces.

You know, it really frosts me. Why would a major league team not offer a contract to an aging outfielder with no speed and bad knees who has a reputation as a clubhouse cancer, probably took cattle steroids for several years and has criminal counts that seemingly multiply like rabbits? Must be collusion.

Now Bonds Faces 14 BALCO Perjury Counts [SFGate]