Apr 25, 2008 8:40 pm US/Pacific
Track Coach Heads For SF Trial In BALCO Case
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) ―
A lawyer for an Olympic track coach accused of lying in a steroids probe said Friday he does not anticipate a plea bargain and expects to go ahead with a federal trial in San Francisco on May 19.
William Keane, an attorney for Trevor Graham, said, "We are going to trial."
The attorney spoke outside a pretrial evidence hearing in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
Graham, of North Carolina, is accused of three counts of making false statements in 2004 to agents in a sports drug investigation that grew out of a probe of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO.
If the case goes to trial before a jury in Illston's court on May 19 as scheduled, it will be the only the second BALCO-related case to go to trial instead of ending in a guilty plea.
Eight other people, including BALCO founder Victor Conte and disgraced former Olympic track star Marion Jones, who was one of Graham's clients, have pleaded guilty either to distributing performance-enhancing drugs or to lying.
The other person to go to trial was former champion cyclist Tammy Thomas, who was convicted in Illston's court on April 4 of making false statements and obstructing justice before a grand jury.
Baseball home run champion Barry Bonds is awaiting trial on perjury and obstruction charges.
Graham is accused in a 2006 indictment of lying to investigators about his relationship with an alleged distributor of performance-enhancing drugs during an interview in the office of his then-lawyer in Raleigh, N.C., on June 8, 2004.
He is charged with falsely saying he never set up his athletes with drugs from the distributor, never met the distributor in person and didn't talk to him by phone after 1997.
The name of the alleged distributor is not given in the indictment, but court papers filed by Graham's lawyers indicate the person was Angel Heredia, a former Mexican discus champion, trainer and amateur chemist. Heredia is expected to be a key prosecution witness.
Friday's hearing concerned a bid by Graham to obtain copies of notes made by lawyers for a private drug testing organization, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, about interviews with Heredia and three track athletes.
After hearing arguments at midday, Illston issued a written order in late afternoon requiring the agency to give defense lawyers the notes.
She wrote that Graham had a "crucial" need for the information because all four of the individuals may be trial witnesses and the defense has not been able to conduct its own interviews with them.
When the judge asked during the hearing whether the defense had
tried to contact Heredia, Keane answered, "Our investigator reached him by phone this week and he hung up on us. We take that as a 'no.'"
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