Key points of the Bonds indictment

The federal indictment that was four years in the making finally came down on Thursday afternoon. Barry Bonds was charged with four counts of perjury, one of obstruction of justice and a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

It took a long time for prosecutors to connect the dots, but here's their case in a nutshell:

• In December 2003, Bonds was called before a grand jury investigating BALCO. He was warned if he failed to tell the truth that he would be indicted for lying under oath. If he said he took steroids, he could have faced severe sanctions from baseball.
• Prosecutors confronted Bonds with evidence that he was given undectectable steroids (the "cream" and the "clear") by personal trainer Greg Anderson. Investigators seized a doping calendar labeled "BB" during a raid on Anderson's house, and also had a positive steroids test that was likely seized in the raid on BALCO for somebody named "Barry B." (This is before baseball had its own drug-testing program.) Bonds didn't believe that those documents tied him to anything, and he testified that day that he didn't believe Anderson had ever given him banned drugs.
• Anderson later pleaded guilty to steroid distribution charges in the BALCO case.

Therefore, Bonds' allegedly false statements are the basis for the perjury counts, and his alleged pattern of lies represent obstruction of justice, according to the grand jury.

Because Anderson never testified, prosecutors couldn't take that last step. They're not revealing why they can take that step now. Anderson was released after being locked up for more than a year in prison on contempt charges.

Some additional reading on the case: