Tammy Thomas: guilty

Tammy Thomas, a former U.S. Olympic cycling team member, was convicted Friday of perjury charges tied to the wide-ranging BALCO scandal, a verdict that underscores for those looking at what might yet happen to Barry Bonds something I assure you Bonds' lawyers already know -- the federal government is supposed to win.

That doesn't mean the system is unfair, or life is unfair or, as Thomas yelled at prosecutors after jurors in a San Francisco courthouse convicted her of three counts of perjury and another of obstruction of justice, according to news accounts from the scene, "You're out to destroy lives -- you like to destroy people's lives."

That's not the least bit true.

People who choose to commit crimes choose to destroy their own lives. People who opt to lie to federal authorities do so at abundant risk to their liberty. Prosecutors can not abide being lied to.

It is a prosecutor's responsibility -- and, indeed, a burden -- to assess whether a crime has been committed and then, as a first step, to test that evidence before a grand jury. If a grand jury finds that evidence sufficient, the case then moves forward, to a trial calendar. Most times, in more than nine of 10 instances, criminal cases settle out before trial; defendants plead guilty for a host of reasons but most always because they are, in fact, guilty.

The mystery in this case is why Thomas put prosecutors to the test of a full-blown trial.

Because, all along, the verdict reached Friday seemed the only sensible outcome.

The past few weeks have been full of newspaper think pieces pondering the import of the Thomas case on Bonds' future.

Please. He, and his lawyers, who are exceptionally smart and capable, didn't need to learn what the verdict Friday signaled.

They knew it before opening statements in Tammy Thomas' trial: the federal government, almost always, wins.