By Bob Egelko
San Francisco Chronicle
Sept. 22, 2006
Excerpt:
A federal judge said Thursday that
ordering two Chronicle reporters to prison for as long as a year and a
half is the only hope he has of pressuring them into revealing their
sources of confidential grand jury testimony about star athletes' use
of steroids.
After a three-hour hearing in which reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and
Lance Williams vowed never to give up their sources, U.S. District
Judge Jeffrey White said he would send the journalists to federal
prison if they lost their appeals of his earlier order that they tell a
grand jury who leaked the testimony.
White rejected a request by the reporters' lawyers to impose fines
instead, saying that was unlikely to make them talk. "The only
appropriate sanction is to incarcerate these two individuals to the
full extent permitted'' by law, White said.
That could be as long as 18 months, the maximum allowed by a 1970
federal law. Prosecutors have agreed to delay incarceration until a
panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
decides whether the reporters have a right to refuse to testify, a
ruling that is at least several months away. [...]
Outside the courthouse, about 50 journalists, some wearing T-shirts
that read, "Sportswriters for Freedom of the Press,'' demonstrated in
support of the reporters. In the crowded courtroom, Fainaru-Wada and
Williams addressed White for the first time since receiving subpoenas
in April to testify before the grand jury.
They said they respect the law but can't comply with the judge's order of last month that they reveal their sources. [...]
Fainaru-Wada and Williams' articles in 2004 quoted closed-door grand
jury testimony by Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees, sprinter Tim
Montgomery and other athletes who said they had used
performance-enhancing substances that, according to prosecutors, were
illegal steroids supplied by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or
BALCO.
The reporters also quoted leaked testimony by Giants superstar Barry
Bonds, who denied knowingly using steroids but said he had taken
substances he thought were flaxseed oil and rubbing balm for arthritis.
Descriptions of those substances matched "the clear" and "the cream,"
two undetectable performance-enhancing drugs distributed by BALCO, a
Burlingame company that advertised itself as offering nutritional
supplements.
