(one of these years, I will become tired of using a photo of the wrong Greg Anderson. Not this year, however)
Barry Bonds’ forthcoming perjury trial aside, the New York Daily News’ Christian Red and Nathaniel Vinton report the federal government will not seek to use drug-testing records seized from Major League Baseball in 2004
Justice Department spokesperson Tracy Schmaler told The Associated Press that the government will not go to the Supreme Court seeking to reverse rulings by a series of court panels that declared the government’s seizure unconstitutional. The seizure of Bonds’ records was not challenged, and prosecutors plan to use them as evidence at the slugger’s long-awaited San Francisco trial this spring.
Paula Canny, the San Francisco attorney who has represented Bonds’ former trainer Greg Anderson, said that the decision means that even if there is smoking-gun evidence in the records, it will never be admissible in courts unless it relates to players originally named in search warrants drafted in 2004.
“It means,” Canny said, “that if they got Roger Clemens’ urine sample, they can’t use it. If they got Miguel Tejada’s urine sample, they can’t use it. None of it (beyond 10 players named on search warrants) is admissible.”
Canny, whose client has been jailed several times for refusing to testify about Bonds, said that the case “affects every single American” by reinforcing limits on what federal agents can do as they move into realms that citizens may consider private. She said the solicitor general’s decision not to appeal to the Supreme Court was “an appropriate concession by the government of the wrongdoing of their agent (FDA investigator Jeff Nowitzky)
“What this means is the government, when they go to search an entity, and there’s probable cause to search Person X, it doesn’t mean that they can take Person Y or Person Z’s stuff too,” said Canny. “They shouldn’t appeal, because No. 1, they’ll lose. And No. 2, what they did was wrong. It’s nice that they conceded their wrongdoing.”