WHITE PLAINS — The former track star Marion Jones’s tearful courtroom plea to avoid jail was denied Friday by a federal judge who said her sentence should serve as a deterrent for others who may lie to federal agents, and Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for pleading guilty to two counts of perjury.
Judge Kenneth M. Karas of the United States District Court said he took into account Jones’s wish not to be separated from her two small sons, but he said he did not fully believe Jones’s limited admission that she used performance-enhancing drugs and wanted to send the message that lying to government investigators carries a stiff penalty.
“I want people to think twice before lying,” Karas said. “I want to make them realize no one is above the law.”
Jones pleaded guilty in October to lying to federal agents in two separate investigations, a bank-fraud case being prosecuted out of New York and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative case in Northern California involving performance-enhancing drugs. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of zero to six months. Jones’s lawyers asked Karas to limit the sentence to probation.
Jones asked Karas for leniency before he announced his decision. “I pray that you will be as merciful as a human being can be,” she said.
She was given six months for the first count of perjury, stemming from the Balco case, and two months for the second, to be served concurrently. That will be followed by two years of probation, and she was ordered to perform 800 hours of community service working with young athletes to spread an anti-drug message. She is to report to a facility near her home in Austin, Tex., on March 11.
After the sentence, Jones hugged her husband, the former sprinter Obadele Thompson, and cried as she buried her face in his shoulder.
Jones, whose sons are 4 years old and 7 months old, huddled with a dozen or so friends and family members in the courtroom. She then ventured outside to say a few words.
“As I’m sure everyone can imagine, I’m extremely disappointed today,” Jones, 32, said, with Thompson standing next to her with an arm around her waist. “I will respect the judge’s orders. I truly hope that people will learn from my mistakes.”
Later Friday, Karas sentenced one of Jones’s former coaches, Steve Riddick, to five years and three months in jail for his involvement in the bank-fraud scheme that ensnared Jones. Riddick also received three years’ probation and must pay back $375,000.
Jones’s lawyers tried to persuade Karas that Jones had already suffered from her guilty plea and that her acceptance of responsibility warranted a more lenient sentence.
A few days after admitting to using performance-enhancing drugs in her guilty plea, Jones returned the five Olympic medals she won in 2000. The International Olympic Committee and track and field’s federation have wiped her results from the books starting from the summer of 2000, when she said she started using steroids.
“We were very disappointed in the sentence,” George Hulse, Jones’s cousin, said outside the courtroom. “No consideration was taken for the fact that she has been shamed, that she has lost her medals, that she has been brought to financial ruin. She has paid a terrible human price already.”
But Karas said those consequences had followed from Jones’s decision to break the rules of international competition, not the law, and would not affect his sentence. He said he did not believe Jones had been completely forthcoming in her admission that she used drugs.
In her guilty plea, Jones said she had been given a substance by her coach, Trevor Graham, starting in the summer of 2000, but he told her it was flaxseed oil. She said she did not realize it had been the steroid THG, known as the clear, until she left Graham and stopped taking it. Karas said he doubted a high-level athlete would be unaware of a drug’s effects on performance.
“I am troubled, quite frankly, by the statement,” he said.
In a pre-sentencing memo, the lead Balco investigator, Jeff Novitzky, provided Karas with evidence that Jones’s drug use went further than THG. The evidence included doping calendars and testimony from a doctor that indicated Jones had used the blood-boosting drug EPO and human growth hormone.
Karas did not specifically mention that evidence, but he said he took the matter of performance-enhancing drugs seriously. He said he wanted Jones to use her experiences to help young athletes avoid the choices she made.
“Athletes in society have an elevated status,” he said. “They entertain, they inspire and perhaps most importantly, they serve as role models for kids around the world. When there is this widespread level of cheating, it sends all the wrong messages to those who follow these athletes’ every move.”
He suggested that Jones contact the United States Olympic Committee, the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the United States Track and Field Association after her release from prison as part of her community service.
The prosecutors in the Balco case have not yet indicated to what extent Jones may be used in Graham’s trial for perjury charges, which is scheduled to begin in March. Jones’s statements in October about Graham’s providing her with drugs will certainly be evidence, but Jones could also be called as a witness. With her guilty plea, she forfeited her Fifth Amendment right not to testify.
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