If you think (a) the Bonds trial couldn’t get any more cringe-worthy; and (b) I couldn’t find a way to make a second post about Barry Bonds’ testicles today, well, you’re quite mistaken.
After a couple of witnesses took the stand this morning, the jury was cleared and Bonds’ lawyers told the judge that Kimberly Bell -- Bonds’ ex-girlfriend -- testified about Bonds’ testicle shrinkage differently yesterday than she did before the grand jury. Back in 2003, Bonds’ lawyers say, Bell said Bonds’ testicles shrunk by 50%. Yesterday she said that they had shrunk, but not by as much.
The issue here is that Bonds’ lawyers are accusing the prosecution of withholding critical information. Specifically, that a key witnesses testimony was going to be different in front of the grand jury than it was at trial. While this doesn’t seem like a major deal on the surface -- the less specificity we hear about Bonds’ testicles the better -- the judge said this concerned her during the back-and-forth a few minutes ago. If the defense knew that Bell would present a moving target, it may have changed their entire case theme. And it would have made cross-examination of her a fundamentally different deal than the on-the-fly way it was dealt with yesterday.
The court is in recess at the moment, but it would not be at all shocking if at some point -- maybe even after the break -- the defense moved for a mistrial on the grounds that evidence was withheld. I’d be surprised if the motion was granted. There are ways to remedy this short of that, such as striking Bell’s testimony and/or making some sort of statement about it to the jury. But either way, it’s a serious issue and, even in the likely event that the case goes on, it could be damaging to the prosecution and could be a potentially major appeal issue for an appeals court that has been fairly pro-Bonds in previous rulings.