THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO — Trevor Graham’s lawyer told a federal jury Monday that several athletes caught doping are using the former track coach as a “convenient scapegoat for their past mistakes and their past drug use.”
Graham has pleaded not guilty to three charges that he lied to federal investigators about his relationship with the steroids dealer Angel “Memo” Heredia of Laredo, Texas, as his trial started with opening statements.
The two-week trial will give Barry Bonds’ legal team another preview of how the government’s top doping detective, former IRS agent Jeff Novitzky, fares on the witness stand. Novitzky led the raid of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, that has ensnared dozens of athletes including Bonds, who is charged with lying to a grand jury when he denied knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs. No trial date has been scheduled for Bonds, who has pleaded not guilty to all 15 charges.
Novitzky is expected to be the first witness Tuesday morning. Novitzky is now a Food and Drug Administration investigator.
Assistant U.S. lawyer Jeffrey Finigan on Monday told the jury that two IRS agents interviewed Graham in June 2004 as part of their investigation into whether track star Marion Jones had lied under oath when she told a grand jury she had never used performance-enhancing drugs. Jones is now serving a six-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to lying to investigators about doping and her role in a check-fraud scheme.
Jones testified she obtained banned substances from Graham. Finigan said Heredia will testify he supplied Graham with the oxygen-boosting drug EPO to give Jones.
Finigan also told the jury that Tim Montgomery, who once claimed the mantel of “fastest man on earth,” first told investigators of Graham’s connection to Heredia.
Neither Jones nor Montgomery, who was recently sentenced to nearly four years in prison for dealing in bad checks and is charged with selling heroin, are expected to testify. But at least five other athletes formerly trained by Graham are expected to testify that their ex-coach either gave them drugs or sent them to Heredia to score.
“These prosecution witnesses have biases against Mr. Graham,” Keane told the jury. “They have self-serving agendas that have led them to make false accusations against Mr. Graham.”
Heredia, a Mexican national whom prosecutors helped hold onto his U.S. work visa in exchange for his co-operation, will testify against Graham during the trial, which is expected to last roughly two weeks. Heredia also surreptitiously taped a personal conversation with Graham when both attended the Prefontaine Nike Classic track meet in 2006 in Eugene, Ore. Heredia also taped several telephone calls between the two that prosecutors plan to play for the jury.
Graham is also charged with lying when he said he had only one telephone conversation with Heredia and denying that the two ever met in person. Finigan showed the jury a group photograph of Graham standing next to Heredia that he said was taken in late 1996. Finigan also told the jury that Graham’s mobile phone and home telephone records showed numerous telephone calls to Heredia.
Graham’s attorney William Keane told the jury that Graham “misspoke” and that he did visit Heredia, but that the mistake didn’t slow down the government’s doping probe.
“This was not a knowing or willful false statement that was material,” Keane said.
Keane also hinted that Heredia may be in for a tough cross-examination because the lawyer alleged the government’s star witness “continued dealing drugs even after he was working with the prosecution.”
Keane displayed another central theme of Graham’s expected defence, telling the jury that the track coach “was the first whistle blower on BALCO” because he anonymously sent a syringe containing a previously undetectable steroid THG to the United States Anti-Doping Agency in June of 2003. Investigators later determined that THG was being distributed by BALCO.