Thomas Is Found Guilty in First Trial Linked to Balco Case
Thomas Is Found Guilty in First Trial Linked to Balco Case
SAN FRANCISCO — A former elite cyclist, whose trial was the first in the five-and-a-half-year investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, was found guilty Friday of making false statements under oath to a federal grand jury about using performance-enhancing drugs.
The cyclist, Tammy Thomas, was convicted on three of five perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice by a jury at the federal courthouse here. She probably faces more than a year in jail, according to legal experts.
Thomas became enraged after the verdict was read and yelled at the jury and the prosecution.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you meant what you did,” Thomas shouted at jury members after they were dismissed.
“I already had one career taken away; look me in the eye, you can’t do it,” she said as her lawyer tried to restrain her.
Her father, in the gallery, shouted, “They can’t do it!”
After a sentencing date was set July 18, Thomas became heated again as she passed members of the prosecution as they tried to exit the courtroom.
“You’re out to destroy lives, you like to destroy lives,” she said to the assistant United States attorney Matt Parrella.
Parrella appeared to try to say something to Thomas, but her lawyer pulled her away.
Jeffrey Nedrow, the other prosecutor on the case, called out to Parrella, “Come on, Matt, let’s go.”
Thomas’s trial had been closely watched by lawyers for Barry Bonds and the former track coach Trevor Graham, who await trials for being suspected of making false statements in connection with the Balco investigation.
The Thomas conviction appeared to strengthen the government’s hand against Bonds and Graham, who is set to go on trial next month, and increases the likelihood that the two will consider plea agreements.
Throughout the trial, lawyers for Bonds and Graham sat in the courtroom’s gallery. In particular, they took notes when the I.R.S. special agent Jeff Novitzky was cross-examined for the first time in the investigation.
Thomas’s lawyer, Ethan Balogh, did little to discredit Novitzky, who has been intimately involved in the Balco investigation since rummaging through the lab’s trash in 2002 and discovering needles and syringes.
It was Novitzky and these federal prosecutors who persuaded a former Mets clubhouse attendant to cooperate with investigators for baseball’s Mitchell report, which later named dozens of players for their connection to performance-enhancing drugs.
The United States Anti-Doping Agency barred Thomas from cycling for life in 2002 after it was revealed she had tested positive for the designer steroid THG, which had been created by Patrick Arnold, a chemist who sold banned substances to Balco.
When Thomas testified before a grand jury investigating Balco in 2003, she denied having ever received substances from Arnold.
Prosecutors said Thomas was crucial to the government’s investigation because she was one of the few athletes to have received the substances directly from Arnold. The government said her false statements slowed its investigation of Arnold.
When Balco’s founder and three other men were indicted for distributing steroids in 2004, the government said it could not charge Arnold because it did not have enough evidence. Two years later, Arnold pleaded guilty to distributing steroids.
Arnold testified at this trial that he provided the substances to Thomas, contradicting her grand jury testimony.
“We are severely disappointed with the jury’s verdict and thought there was a mountain of evidence that showed her innocence,” Balogh said.
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