Tammy Thomas the current law student and ex-doping cyclist received 6 months of home confinement for her lies under oath in the BALCO investigation. The sentencing judge decided Thomas should not receive a longer sentence that the steroids distributors from whom Thomas secured the drugs. (Steroid Nation search here)
Of major concern is a law student convicted of lying. Not the type of attorney needed today. To CBS5.
A former championship cyclist was sentenced in federal court in San Francisco today to six months of home confinement, but no prison time, for lying to a grand jury in a sports steroids probe.
Tammy Thomas was convicted in April of three false statements and obstruction of justice before a 2003 grand jury investigating sports drug distribution by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of two and one-half years in prison for the lies, which included Thomas's statements that she never took anabolic steroids and never took any
products given to her by steroid chemist Patrick Arnold.
But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said it would be "excessive" for Thomas to receive a heavier sentence than those convicted of distributing the drugs, whom Illston termed the "pushers" in the case.
Illston noted that BALCO president Victor Conte was sentenced to four months in prison and Arnold and sports trainer Greg Anderson each to three months.
Remember how Thomas went nuts in the courtroom at the verdict announcement? Apparently didn't affect the sentence.
All three pleaded guilty before Illston in 2005 or 2006 to conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids to professional athletes. Their sentences were within federal guidelines then in effect.
Illston said, "It would be inconsistent to impose a sentence ten times longer than Mr. Arnold's."
The sentence could be an indication of the general range of penalty that home-run champion Barry Bonds might receive if he is convicted in a trial next year on similar false-statements charges.
The former San Francisco Giants slugger is due to go on trial in Illston's court on March 2 on 14 counts of false statements and one count of obstructing justice in 2003 grand jury testimony. Illston will hold a hearing Nov. 5 on his bid for dismissal of 10 of the counts.
Illston today also sentenced Thomas to five years of probation and 500 hours of community service.
She said another factor in the no-prison sentence was that the cyclist is suffering from several undisclosed medical problems that couldn't easily be managed in prison.
Wonder if the medical problems aren't the results of anabolic steroids abuse? Or could be depression.
Thomas, who has recently been attending law school in Oklahoma, will be able to leave home during the home detention to go to work, school or medical appointments.
Thomas won a silver medal in the World Track Cycling Championship in Belgium in 2001, but was banned from competition for life in 2002 after tests showed she had used norbolethone, a then-obscure steroid.
She was one of 11 people indicted in the BALCO probe and was the first to go to trial. Eight others, included Conte, Arnold and Anderson, pleaded guilty to charges of drug distribution or lying.
The only other to go to trial thus far is Olympic track coach Trevor Graham of North Carolina, who was convicted in May of one count of a false statement to an investigator. He is due to be sentenced by Illston on Oct. 21.
The remaining defendant is Bonds, who is accused of lying when he told the grand jury he never knowingly received anabolic steroids or human growth hormone from Anderson, who was his trainer.
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