Barry Bonds’ conviction upheld

The highly unusual obstruction of justice conviction Barry Bonds was stuck with on April 13 was upheld by a federal judge on Friday night.

Bonds’ lawyers had asked for a new trial on the charge or an acquittal, but U.S. District Judge Susan Illston refused Friday to overturn the only unanimous decision reached by the jury in her courtroom four months ago. Jurors failed to reach a verdict on three counts charging Bonds with making false statements to a grand jury in 2003. Prosecutors have yet to say whether they plan to retry him on those three counts.

According to The Associated Press, the next step for Bonds is to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which could leave things without a resolution until 2013. Bonds does have a strong case against the charge. As our own Craig Calcaterra broke it down this morning:

You’ll recall that the primary basis for Bonds’ motion was that one cannot or at least should not be convicted of obstruction of justice on the basis of giving “evasive testimony” when in fact he actually answered the question. And Bonds did — after a brief, meaningless digression — answer the question at issue with a straight “no” answer. And answering the question aside, the law in this area makes it clear: the burden is on the prosecutor to direct a less-than-cooperative witness to answer a question, not to simply let him ramble, throw his hands up in the air and cry “obstruction!” or “perjury!”

Sentencing has yet to be determined, but the common belief is that Bonds could spend anywhere from 3-6 months in jail if the conviction is upheld.