Lawyers for the personal trainer of baseball star Barry Bonds will get a chance to retest suspected steroids taken from his apartment and car in a raid last year.
Prosecutors said in court on Friday that they have agreed in principle to hand over the evidence, which they claim includes vials of suspected steroids and human growth hormone.
Details of the agreement are to be finalized by May 14, and attorneys for personal trainer Greg Anderson say they expect their own chemical analysis of the materials to take about two to three weeks after that.
Anderson is one of four men charged in a drug-distribution ring allegedly centered around the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. All four have pleaded innocent. No athlete has been charged, and Bonds repeatedly has denied using steroids.
Among the items prosecutors said were seized included 10 vials labeled as Serostim, a synthetic human growth hormone, and a 30-tablet bottle of the steroid Andriol -- with just one red pill inside. Also found was a vial labeled depo-testosterone and another labeled Enantat, both steroids.
Prosecutors claimed they also found US$63,920 in cash in a locked safe at Anderson's residence, and that "some of the money was broken up into separate envelopes with the first names of known athlete clients written on them."
"In addition, agents found files identifying specific athletes," the government has claimed. "These files contained calendars, which appear to contain references to daily doses of steroids and growth hormones."
Prosecutor Jeff Nedrow said in court Friday that the retesting of urine samples from major league baseball players, which were seized in an April 8 federal raid on a Las Vegas drug-testing lab, is still in legal limbo.
Nedrow said a motion to block the testing has been filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, but did not provide any details about who is trying to block that testing.
Major League Baseball's players' association earlier filed a motion seeking to quash a subpoena for those test results. The subpoena sought test results from Bonds and about 10 other players, but it is unclear whether urine samples from Bonds and the others were taken in the Las Vegas raid.
Anderson's lawyers filed two motions this week -- one seeking results from those urine tests, and another accusing the Bush administration of "a political agenda'' in the BALCO case.
Prosecutors again tried on Friday to schedule an early trial, saying the government was ready for a mid-June trial. But lawyers for all four defendants said that's far too soon, and US District Judge Susan Illston agreed -- and set another status hearing in the case for June 25.
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