Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Barry Bonds’s steroids test, doping calendars prepared by his trainer and other key government evidence might be excluded from the baseball player’s perjury trial, a federal judge said.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston said today she was leaning toward ruling that the evidence is inadmissible unless federal prosecutors have testimony from Greg Anderson, Bonds’s former trainer, or other witnesses who can link the calendars and blood tests to Bonds, Major League Baseball’s home-run leader. Anderson’s attorney, Mark Geragos, said yesterday that his client won’t testify.

“If nobody testifies about them, the ones that are allegedly related to the defendant, I don’t find that the hearsay exception urged will get them into evidence,” Illston said at a hearing in San Francisco.

Bonds, 44, appeared at the hearing before Illston today accompanied by six attorneys. He pleaded innocent to 10 counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice at an earlier hearing in San Francisco federal court. A monthlong trial is scheduled for March 2.

At issue is whether urine- and blood-test results and calendars seized from Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a California lab that supplied Anderson with steroids, and a secret locker room tape recording of Anderson talking about injecting Bonds with steroids can be used at Bonds’s trial.

Whose Tests?

Bonds’s attorneys say prosecutors can’t prove that the blood and urine used for the tests was actually Bonds’s, the calendars don’t prove he knowingly took steroids and Bonds’s rights to confront witnesses will be violated if he can’t question Anderson about the tapes.

“This is a case where a statement cries out for cross examining,” Dennis Riordan, one of Bonds’s lawyers, told Illston today. “There is no greater pit of mendacity than a men’s locker room.”

Illston said she would take the matter under submission and issue a ruling soon.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow urged Illston to let the evidence in the trial. He said James Valente, a former lab manager who pleaded guilty to distributing steroids, will testify that Anderson came to the lab, known as Balco, on a regular basis with blood and urine samples he said were from Bonds.

Valente will testify that Anderson worked for Bonds as his trainer and steroids supplier, Nedrow said. The government won’t argue that Valente was in the room when Anderson took the samples.

‘Weakness’ in Case

“It shows a weakness in their case, without having Greg Anderson testify,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and a former federal prosecutor. “There are some real hearsay problems. You can’t have someone come into court and say Anderson says this, Anderson says that.”

Prosecutors have said they would use the tests and calendars prepared by Anderson to show that Bonds lied under oath in 2003 when he told a grand jury that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.

Illston, who will preside over Bonds’s trial, ordered public disclosure yesterday of more than 200 pages of government evidence against the former San Francisco Giants slugger.

Marion Jones

Anderson said he gave Bonds the same performance-enhancing drugs that sprinter Marion Jones admitted using before the 2000 Olympics, according to the documents.

There are also lab results that show Bonds tested positive for steroids in 2000 and 2001, and a 2003 urine sample Bonds took as part of baseball’s steroid-testing program that revealed he used a synthetic testosterone and a fertility drug often used as a masking agent for banned substances.

Anderson spent more than a year in prison on civil contempt charges after refusing to testify before a grand jury against Bonds. He was released in November 2007 following the indictment of Bonds and may be sent back to prison for the duration of Bonds’s trial if he again refuses to testify.

Bonds, following his indictment, wasn’t signed by a Major League team last season and hasn’t played since 2007. Bonds hit 762 home runs and won a record seven Most Valuable Player awards over his 22-year career with the Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates.

The case is U.S. v. Bonds, 07-CR-00732, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco federal court at kgullo@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 5, 2009 17:45 EST