Oct 10, 2008 6:14 pm US/Pacific
BALCO Perjurer Tammy Thomas Gets Home Confinement
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ―
A federal judge on Friday sentenced a former elite cyclist to six months of home confinement for lying to a grand jury about her steroid use.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston turned down a federal prosecutor's insistence that Tammy Thomas be sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison, noting that the ringleaders at the center of the government's sports doping probe received four months in prison or less.
A jury in April convicted Thomas of three felony counts of perjury and a count of obstruction of justice.
Thomas was the first person connected to the drug ring located at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as BALCO, to go to trial. She is appealing her conviction, which will likely prevent her from practicing law even though she attended law school.
"I am sorry and shamed at the mistakes I made," Thomas told the judge. "I feel that I already have been punished substantially for my conduct."
Major League home run king Barry Bonds has pleaded not guilty to 15 similar charges and his trial is scheduled to start March 2. Prosecutors declined to comment outside court, as did Ted Cassman, one of Bonds' six attorneys who attended the hearing Friday.
The jury found Thomas guilty of falsely telling the grand jury that she had never taken steroids and had never received any performance-enhancing drugs from a self-taught chemist, Patrick Arnold. Arnold pleaded guilty in 2006 to making two undetectable steroids and served three months in prison.
Thomas made her denials even though she had already been banned from cycling for life, after the drug Norbolethone was detected in her urine. The drug, once an obscure steroid used in human tests in the 1960s, was rediscovered by Arnold, who supplied BALCO.
Prosecutors also showed jurors Thomas' medical records, which showed she grew a full beard and had underwent dramatic voice changes that a doctor diagnosed as side effects of heavy steroid use.
Thomas is the tenth BALCO figure to suffer a conviction. A jury found track coach Trevor Graham guilty of lying to a federal investigator during the government's sports doping probe. Graham is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 21.
Eight others, including the sprinter Marion Jones and BALCO founder Victor Conte, have pleaded guilty to various charges of perjury, drug and money laundering charges. Jones was released from prison after serving six months and Conte served four months.
Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson was sentenced to three months for helping to distribute steroids obtained from BALCO.
On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Parrella argued unsuccessfully for a harsher sentence for Thomas because, he said, lying to a grand jury "strikes at the integrity of the system."
But the judge said, given the prison sentences of the "other miscreants" in the BALCO case, it would be unfair to send Thomas to prison.
"The drug dealers in this case who started this got sentences much different than are urged," Illston said.
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