An attorney who admitted leaking the confidential grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds and other athletes to a reporter was sentenced Thursday to two and a half years in prison, by far the harshest penalty to result from the government’s sprawling probe of steroids in sports.
Troy Ellerman, 44, pleaded guilty in February to allowing a San Francisco Chronicle reporter to view transcripts of testimony by Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and other athletes embroiled in the steroids investigation. Giambi admitted taking steroids while Sheffield and Bonds testified if they did take performance enhancing drugs, they did so unwittingly.
After the newspaper published the players’ embarrassing accounts after they had been promised confidentiality, the judge overseeing the case recommended that the Department of Justice launch a leak investigation.
Ellerman initially blamed federal investigators for leaking the testimony and argued that the case against his client be tossed out because of government misconduct. He also lied to a judge about not knowing the source of the leaks.
Ellerman was a successful Sacramento attorney when Victor Conte, founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as BALCO, hired him following a 2003 raid of the Burlingame nutritional supplements lab by federal agents.
He also later served as the attorney for BALCO vice president James Valente, and it was while he was representing Valente that he allowed reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada to view the players’ grand jury testimony.
The leaked testimony was featured prominently in Fainaru-Wada’s book co-written with Lance Williams called “Game of Shadows,” which recounts the alleged steroid use of Bonds, who is five home runs away from breaking Hank Aaron’s career home run record.
Ellerman said the pressures of the high-profile case coupled with alcohol and cocaine abuse were major factors in letting the reporter view the transcripts.
He pleaded guilty to four felony counts of obstruction of justice and related charges, and federal prosecutors dropped their case against the two reporters. They had faced up to 18 months in prison for refusing to divulge the source of the leak.
Judge White also ordered Ellerman to give 10 talks on conduct to law students. The judge didn’t fine Ellerman.
Ellerman was fired as commissioner of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and voluntarily gave up his license to practice law in California.
Ellerman’s two clients in the original case, BALCO founder Conte and former BALCO executive Valente, pleaded guilty to steroids-related charges in an earlier phase of the investigation. Chemist Patrick Arnold, Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson and track coach Remi Korchemny have also pleaded guilty to related charges.
Korchemny and Valente were sentenced to probation, and the others were each sentenced to jail terms no longer than four months. Anderson remains in prison, where he returned after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating possible perjury and tax evasion charges against Bonds.