Anderson gets subpoenaed

He has refused to talk about Barry Bonds in the past.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
SAN FRANCISCO -- From the time federal agents confronted him in the BALCO steroids case, Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' weight trainer and longtime friend, refused to talk about whether he had provided banned drugs to the San Francisco Giants star.
Now, legal experts say, Anderson faces the unhappy choice of either answering a federal grand jury's questions about Bonds and steroids -- or going back to prison.
In what the experts called an unusually tough move, a federal grand jury in San Francisco has subpoenaed Anderson, who recently completed a prison term for dealing steroids in the BALCO case, to testify in an investigation of whether Bonds lied under oath in 2003 when he said he had never taken steroids.
Can't avoid testifying
Because Anderson already has pleaded guilty and has served his time, he probably cannot avoid testifying about Bonds and drugs by citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the experts said in interviews.
And without the Fifth Amendment protection, he and another BALCO defendant who has been subpoenaed -- BALCO Vice President James Valente, who also pleaded guilty in the case -- have few legal options other than telling the grand jury what they know about Bonds.
"This is hardball," said Peter Keane, law professor at Golden Gate University. Anderson "has a choice -- he can either testify or go to jail and be locked up for the life of the grand jury."
Veteran San Francisco defense lawyer Doron Weinberg said the government runs the risk of appearing to violate "the implicit expectation of fair dealing" when it demands the testimony of a defendant who already has settled his case and paid his debt to society.
Could go back to jail
But if a witness' evidence is relevant and important, he said, the law seems to allow the government to force a former defendant before a grand jury to testify about his crimes and to jail him in an effort to coerce his testimony. Former federal prosecutor Tony West called the new round of subpoenas in the case "an unusual and pretty heavy-handed tactic."
The government "is trying to make an example of him [Bonds] by pursuing him this heavily," West said. "It goes back to Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, really pursuing these high-profile individuals."
At issue in the case is Bonds' testimony before the BALCO grand jury in December 2003. As The San Francisco Chronicle has reported, Bonds denied using steroids. He acknowledged that Anderson had given him substances that matched the description of two undetectable steroids distributed by BALCO -- the "cream" and the "clear" -- but he insisted they were flaxseed oil and an arthritis balm.
Bonds said he didn't know
Bonds also professed no knowledge of a series of calendars and other documents seized from Anderson's home that prosecutors believed detailed Bonds' use of banned drugs.
Prosecutors didn't believe his testimony, the grand jury transcript indicates.
Last year, his former girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, testified that Bonds had confided to her in 2000 that he was taking steroids.
The grand jury resumed its investigation of Bonds and perjury recently.