That Lawyer's in Trouble if Barry Bonds Ever Gets His All-Naturally Grotesquely Enlarged Hands on Him

The lawyer did it.

That's the word out of San Francisco, where today defense attorney Troy Ellerman--who has represented both the Bay Area Laboratory Co-op (BALCO) founder Victor Conte and its vice president, James Valente, in the investigation into the company's illegal activities as part of a federal steroid probe--agreed to plead guilty to leaking secret transcripts of grand jury testimony from an earlier phase of the investigation to San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Apparently, Ellerman wasn't satisfied with the fact that he'd already guided both of the aforementioned clients to guilty pleas (the same plea that pretty much anyone who's ever been associated with BALCO has made...with one notable, bloated-skulled exception), so he decided to go the extra mile by falling on his sword. That guy must really hate Barry Bonds.

Williams and Fainaru-Wada, who used the information they found in the documents--such as the fact that baseball star Jason Giambi and sprinter Tim Montgomery openly admitted to having used steroids--to write a number of stories for the paper in 2004 and later the book Game of Shadows, which offered highly incriminating evidence against MLB-record-thief and all-around a-hole Bonds regarding his unbelievably obvious use of illegal performance-enhancing substances (it was also, surprisingly, kind of boring), had been facing jail time for refusing to divulge their source. Now they're off the hook while the finally-revealed man behind the curtain, Ellerman, will be going to prison for two years.

Personally, I think he should be getting a parade--but NOT one for "Most Reliable Lawyer Ever". I presume Victor Conte would agree with the latter condition.