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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Just to clarify: perjury convictions are probably the hardest to achieve in the federal system. Convicting a San Francisco icon before a San Francisco jury will be especially hard.

Corey, the statutory maximums are simply run consecutively when you hear about a 30 year max. The federal sentencing guidelines, while just advisory now and not mandatory anymore, would suggest a much, much lesser sentence, closer to a year in prison than even five years. Plus, it's not like he obstructed justice in a grand jury which was investigating a terrorist plot. Finally, while a sentencing judge will want to make an example to some degree of Bonds, he or she will probably also consider that a convicted Bonds will already have received a sort of punishment not received by regular citizens who have been convicted of the same crimes. If I had to guess, should Bonds be convicted of all charges he'd likely face anywhere from no time to 18 months in prison, tops.