Legal News

Anybody in SF Never Heard of Barry Bonds? We?ve Got a Jury Seat for You

By Ashby Jones

It would be extremely hard for me, as a member of a jury, to convict anyone who gave significant service time to the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels during the time I’ve been following them — over three decades. My love of the team simply runs too deep.

Am I proud of that? Absolutely not. It’s embarrassing. But were I in the running to serve on a criminal jury of Darin Erstad or Bobby Grich or “Disco” Dan Ford or Garret Anderson or even, yes, Mark Teixeira, I’d probably tell the judge that I would not be able to serve impartially.

I had this thought when reading this NYT piece a few minutes ago about the job facing San Francisco judge Susan Illston, who will soon have to find 12 jurors (and four alternates) from San Francisco to sit in judgment of Giants’ great Barry Bonds.

Experts seem to think that finding 16 folks a little less starry-eyed than I am won’t be impossible.

"I don't think you'll see a lot of prospective jurors calling him a hero because all the publicity about Bonds since his retirement has been negative," said Howard Varinsky, a jury consultant based in the Bay Area, to the NYT. "I'm sure he still has fans . . .

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 16, 2011 (boomark / email).