Entertainment & Sports Law
Marion Jones Gets 6 Months; Disgraced Olympian Lied About Steroids Use
Posted Jan 11, 2008, 12:51 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
Former Olympic champion Marion Jones was sentenced today in federal court in New York to six months in jail for lying in two separate grand jury investigations about her use of the performance-enhancing steroids she now admits she took and her participation in a check-cashing scam run by a fellow athlete.
Although Jones, who is nursing an infant, pleaded for a lighter sentence, and prosecutors said any sentence from probation to the six months she was given would be acceptable to them, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, who sits in White Plains, N.Y., gave her the maximum term for obstruction of justice, according to Bloomberg, the Associated Press and a Chicago Tribune article compiled from wire reports. Her age is given as 31 or 32 in news accounts.
The judge had previously expressed interest in sentencing her consecutively concerning her lies in separate steroids and check-fraud cases, which were the subject of grand jury investigations in California and New York, respectively. (Jones pleaded guilty in October to two counts of obstruction, Bloomberg notes.) However, the prosecution advised against doing so. Karas said he gave her the maximum to send a message to other high-profile athletes who "entertain, ... inspire and, perhaps most important, ... serve as role models," the Tribune article reports.
She is the first athlete to be convicted and sentenced in a five-year government investigation of steroids use in sports.
Once one of the most celebrated athletes in the world, Jones won five medals in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney—golds in the 100-meter, 200-meter and 1,600-meter relay, and bronzes in the 400-meter relay and the long jump. She has returned the medals, and the International Olympic Committee has ordered that her records be expunged from its books.
As she was sentenced today, she reportedly cried on her husband's shoulder.
BBC News: "6-month jail sentence for Jones"
New York Times: "Marion Jones Sentenced to Six Months in Prison"
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