Jonathan Littman continues his coverage of the case against Barry Bonds:

SAN FRANCISCO – Nothing much happened Friday in Courtroom No. 10, which is not the way Team BALCO was hoping its centerpiece perjury case against Barry Bonds would go. For the second time in a month, lead prosecutor Matthew Parrella asked the judge for more time to consider the government’s options in its effort to put Bonds behind bars for allegedly lying about steroid use.

Judge Susan Ilston seemed taken aback, but she consulted her calendar and granted Parrella’s request to return June 6 for a status hearing, meaning that filing the new indictment will take even longer than that.

The government’s move did not appear to be a vote of confidence in the biggest performance enhancement case in history. Three weeks ago, Ilston ruled for the defense, ordering the government to fix its confusing and ambiguous indictment – or start all over. This may not be a game where milking the clock aids the feds. “When the government indicts a case, they’re supposed to be ready,” said Charles La Bella, a former U.S. attorney and chief of the criminal division for the Southern District of California who now practices criminal defense in San Diego. “This sounds like they are really considering whether they are going to bring the case (at all).”

The government likely will take its time to draft a new indictment and bring it before a grand jury. Another possibility is that the government is seeking additional evidence, such as the Major League baseball drug-testing records of Bonds that are hung up in a case on appeal in the Ninth Circuit federal court.

Or perhaps a recent, unrelated flop by the Justice Department has given the government cold feet. The San Francisco office of the antitrust division just last week decided not to pursue a new trial in a hung jury on a computer chip antitrust case. That loss may have some influence on the new San Francisco U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, who might want to take a breath before tackling the thorny Bonds case.

And the final possibility is that prosecutors will use this spring sojourn to determine that the case is beyond repair and seek a settlement or an outright dismissal.

The reversal of fortunes played out briefly between these wood paneled walls in Ilston’s court. A half hour before the judge entered, Parrella approached to the defense side with a big smile and his hands outstretched.

Bonds’ attorneys Cristina Arguedas and Allen Ruby met Parrella with sober expressions. Parrella shrugged and got down to business. He whipped out his BlackBerry. Arguedas put on her glasses. Ruby pulled out some papers. This was a far cry from Parrella’s body language at previous ebullient court appearances, where he would lean back in his chair, smacking his fists and snapping his fingers like a man on a roll.

By Parrella’s side, stood Jeff Nedrow--tall friendly and professorial in a dull brown suit and brown shoes, a green tie and hair askew – pretty much the opposite of a tough, focused Assistant U.S. Attorney. Mr. Nedrow gave a face to what may be the underlying problem. He is the prosecutor who bungled the questioning of Barry Bonds in the grand jury, with a line of questioning so amateurish that even the most skilled prosecutor may be unable to drag a coherent indictment out of it.

“If you’re redrafting the same operative set of facts, it shouldn’t take long,” La Bella said. “Not more than a couple weeks.”

Nor is the grand jury process normally time consuming. The prosecutors must formally bring the new indictment before a new grand jury. “They would isolate the key sentences. Read Bonds’ testimony,” La Bella said. “Explain the evidence. It shouldn’t take more than a morning or afternoon.”

Ruby, a former professional wrestler as broad and imposing as Bonds, spoke so softly his words could barely be heard.

“The first indictment was determined to be defective,” he said. “They recognized it was going nowhere. After many, many years, they will ask another grand jury to return another indictment.”

Bonds’ testimony before the first grand jury was in December 2003. The events in question stretch back another two years. A trial is now unlikely before 2009.

Fading memories do not a perjury conviction make.