Michael Tarm of The Associated Press reports:
When anonymous jurors begin hearing the perjury trial of retired baseball slugger Barry Bonds this week, they can credit their privacy in part to a case involving another famous defendant, but one where the focus is on alleged political corruption rather than steroids: Illinois’ impeached former governor, Rod Blagojevich.
In the Bonds case, Judge Susan Illston alluded to the media crush surrounding Blagojevich’s trial when she ruled that she would keep the jurors’ names secret until after their verdict on whether the homerun king lied to a grand jury about taking performance-enhancing drugs. Illston, in San Francisco, cited the decision by federal Judge James Zagel in Chicago last year to withhold the names of the Blagojevich jurors to protect them from media “harassment.”
Read more in the Miami Herald.