Drug Expert Testifies At Bonds Trial

A drug expert testified at the perjury trial of Barry Bonds in federal court in San Francisco Tuesday that a urine sample provided by the home-run champion in 2003 tested positive for a designer steroid in 2006.

Don Catlin, the founder and former director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, told the jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston that the sample showed the presence of THG.

The scientific name for the substance is tetrahydrogestrinone. It has also been called "the clear."

Bonds, 46, is on trial on charges of lying to a federal grand jury when he testified in December 2003 that he never knowingly received anabolic steroids or human growth hormone from his trainer, Greg Anderson.

The sample provided by Bonds in 2003 was for a Major League Baseball testing program that was supposed to be anonymous. When initially tested, it did not show THG because the steroid was not detectable at the time.

But the sample was not destroyed, and federal investigators in the perjury case seized it in 2004 and had it retested at the UCLA laboratory in 2006.

Bonds admitted to the grand jury in 2003 that he had taken "the clear," but said he thought it was flaxseed oil and did not know it was a steroid.

Catlin also told the jury that the 2006 test detected the presence of clomiphene, a non-steroid chemical that is used as a fertility drug for women.  Another expert testified earlier in the trial that it is sometimes employed by male athletes to restore the natural production of testosterone after they have taken steroids.

Catlin's testimony brought the prosecution side of the case close to an end.

The final piece of prosecution evidence, planned for late morning, was a reading of portions of Bonds' 2003 grand jury testimony. 

Bonds is accused of making a total of four false statements and obstructing justice in that testimony.

Defense attorneys have not said how many, if any, witnesses they plan to call. The trial is in its third week.