Whether or not the perjury case against baseball’s Barry Bonds goes to trial could depend upon who becomes the next U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California.
And, in what’s at best a coincidence or at worst a conflict of interest, one of Bond’s lawyers will have a hand in the selection of the U.S. attorney, the person who has ultimate responsibility for the decision to prosecute.
Cristina C. Arguedas, a member of Bond’s defense team, is serving on the committee than advises Sen. Barbara Boxer on judicial selection.
It falls to Boxer to recommend the person whom President Barack Obama will nominate to replace Republican Joseph P. Russoniello, the current U.S. attorney.
Barry Bonds
Arguedas is one of seven lawyers on the committee headed by Jack W. Lee, a partner in the San Francisco firm of Minami Tamaki LLP.
Among others, the committee also includes retired federal judge Eugene F. Lynch and Santa Clara University Law School professor Margaret M. Russell.
As noted in The New York Times, Arguedas was chair of a Boxer screening committee in 1995 that recommended the judge now overseeing the Bonds case.
Susan Y. Illston, a member of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is presiding over the trial that has been delayed pending an appeal by the prosecution.
Bonds, baseball’s all-time home run leader, was indicted in November 2007 for lying to a grand jury about his possible use of performance enhancing drugs.
A federal appeals court is considering whether Illston was correct in barring some evidence, including positive drug tests, from trial.
As the Times reports, if Illston’s decision is upheld, the U.S. attorney will have to decide whether the case against Bonds should go to trial or be dropped.
Even though the prosecutor she helps select may decide her client’s fate, several legal experts quoted by the Times do not see Arguedas as having a significant conflict of interest.
They note that she’s but one of seven members of the committee. And their task is only to recommend.
“It’s Boxer’s call, it’s Obama’s call, and it’s subject to review of the Department of Justice and Congressional approval,” Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford University Law School, told the newspaper.
However, Travis Tygert, the CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said that Arguedas’ participation in the selection creates a perception that “is not good.”
While Arguedas helps prepare Bonds’ defense, her domestic partner, Carole Migden, has been at the center of a controversy.
The state of California recently paid $335,000 to settle a claim by a motorist who was injured in an accident caused by Migden in 2007.
Migden, who was then a state senator, said she was under treatment for leukemia and did not remember going through a stop sign before the accident.
She also contended that she was on state business at the time, making the state liable for the incident.
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