"Federal prosecutors urged a judge Wednesday to uphold Barry Bonds' conviction for obstruction of justice, arguing that the baseball star tried to mislead a grand jury with a rambling, nonresponsive answer to a question about drug injections.

Bonds gave an "evasive, misleading and false answer" in his 2003 testimony to hide the fact that his trainer, Greg Anderson, had injected him with steroids, prosecutors said in a court filing in San Francisco.

A U.S. District Court jury deadlocked April 13 on three charges that the former Giants outfielder lied to the grand jury by denying that he ever knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs or received injections from anyone except his physician.

But jurors convicted him of a separate count of obstruction for his answer to a question by prosecutors about whether Anderson had ever given him injectable drugs. The jury found that Bonds' response was evasive and intended to interfere with the grand jury's investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, and its distribution of steroids to athletes.

Prosecutors have not said whether they intend to retry Bonds on the three perjury charges. That decision apparently will await U.S. District Judge Susan Illston's ruling on a defense request to overturn the obstruction conviction. Illston has scheduled a hearing Aug. 26."