Much at stake in Tammy Thomas trial: now a law student, will she have a criminal record when she applies to a state bar to practice?

A new twist on the Tammy Thomas BALCO perjury trial emerged over the past few days.  Thomas is currently a law student at the University of Oklahoma.  If convicted of perjury and obstruction in this trial, one would think her admission to a state bar would be significantly at risk.  Why then would she not fess up to the steroid use facing almost no consequence, rather than deceiving investigators which could potentially cause incredible trouble for her?  Simply admit to using an illegal BALCO drug, face the embarrassment (no legal consequences or criminal record) and ride off into the sunset as Jason Giambi did.  To the New York Daily News:

SAN FRANCISCO - For almost a week now, an aura of intense mystery has surrounded the defendant in “USA v Tammy Thomas.” In a federal courtroom here, Thomas sits mostly silent and unflinching through the trial that has undermined her dignity and could ultimately deliver her to prison. The first athlete to actually be tried for charges related to the notorious BALCO doping ring, Thomas has listened quietly as prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office have tried to demonstrate that she lied to a grand jury and obstructed justice - the same crimes that Barry Bonds is accused of committing.

For a week, the government has summoned witnesses with lurid tales of Thomas’ alleged steroid abuse - the beard Thomas was in the middle of shaving when a drug-testing officer came to her door for an unannounced test, or the time she traded an expensive racing bike for muscle-building drugs because she was low on cash.

Her family sits in the front row of the gallery, but Thomas rarely looks at them. Throughout it all, the 38-year-old former track cyclist sits with her lips pursed and her head held high. She hasn’t spoken a word to the media, yet Thomas has perhaps offered one small hint as to why she hasn’t copped a plea deal like Marion Jones did. Thomas holds this subtle clue in her hands every time she comes in and out of Judge Susan Illston’s courtroom at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

What might be on those flash cards?

It is a small stack of flash cards, squares of manila paperboard with neat lines of typeface arranged on them. Thomas often studies the cards during breaks in the court proceedings. Sometimes she even glances down at them during testimony - which has had its tedious spells to be sure, such as the nearly four hours on Thursday that were devoted to reconstructing the chain-of-custody of a urine sample.

The flash cards could be anything from inspiring Biblical anecdotes to useful Spanish phrases, but the most likely explanation for them is schoolwork; Thomas is currently studying law at the University of Oklahoma.

When she graduates, she will presumably seek admission to the bar. A conviction for false statements or obstruction of justice would almost certainly disqualify Thomas from practicing law, and that might be why she has pushed her BALCO defense this far while so many others have taken the hit and moved on.

“There’s no bar association in the country in any state that would admit somebody to practice law with that kind of conviction,” says Peter Keane, a professor and dean at Golden Gate University Law School in San Francisco. “It’s clearly very important for her to have that profession accept her."

Keane, who has been a close observer of the BALCO case, says that Thomas might have avoided a serious jail sentence if she had pleaded guilty like so many figures in the scandal. But instead she has gone double-or-nothing in the hope of exoneration and the chance to practice law afterward. “She’s doing some high stakes gambling,” Keane says.

(more on this high stakes game after the jump)

As we will read, Thomas underwent a remarkable transformation -- due to the anabolic steroids.  Now, to save her potential law career, she hired a lawyer on steroids.

Thomas bears little resemblance to the freakishly masculine figure she was seven years ago, when she won a world championship silver medal in track racing, an event where cyclists pedal furiously around a velodrome.

In those days, Thomas had moved from her home in Mississippi to live and train at two residential training complexes run by the U.S. Olympic Committee. According to Arnold’s former girlfriend, Kelcey Dalton, Thomas was capable of lifting more than 315 pounds in squat lifts - enough weight that the bar would have bent into a curve across Thomas’ broad shoulders.

“She was very thick, something I don’t generally see in elite female athletes,” said Chris Starr, a doping control agent who testified Wednesday that the slender woman at the defendant’s table once had male pattern baldness, a prominent Adam’s apple and a deep and gravely voice. Thomas applied to law school in 2004, not long after trying unsuccessfully to sue the drug-testing laboratory in Los Angeles that detected norbolethone and the designer steroid THG in her urine.

Back then, Thomas tried to represent herself in legal matters. Now she has a formidable advocate in Ethan Balogh, an energetic young attorney who stays upbeat and optimistic even in the face of the overwhelming resources the federal government has put behind Novitzky and the BALCO prosecutors. Balogh would not confirm or deny the flash cards his client has been carrying are related to her legal studies.

A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale Law School, Balogh’s middle name is Atticus - the first name of the dignified lawyer in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” On Monday, he will get an unprecedented opportunity to cross-examine Novitzky, a moment so ripe with possibility that the lawyers of several BALCO athletes are expected to attend.

There is more in the original story.  This leads to another question: do we need lawyers who in the past cheated their competition, then lied about their covert steroid use to investigators?

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http://www.sfgate.com/c/acrobat/2006/12/14/sfchronicle_tammy_thomas_indictment.pdf

Always a good read. Also there's an old magazine article interviewing Thomas before she went to law school, talking about how her giving herself iron injections, etc.

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