Steroid Arrests and Plea Bargains: Where's the Juice?

Jeff Eckhoff of the Des Moines Register has a unique and engaging piece on steroids in pro sports, and specifically how plea bargains with steroid users/dealers may undercut the hoopla (and resulting deterrence) surrounding the initial high-profile arrest. (Jeff Eckhoff, "Plea Deal to Finish D.M. Steroid Probe," Des Moines Register, Dec. 5, 2005). He namely looks at a recent crack-down on world class body-builders in Iowa.

He interviews me for the story, and here are some excerpts:

A wide-ranging federal steroid investigation that centered on Des Moines and targeted several world-class bodybuilders will wrap up next week without anyone going to prison, legal sources say.

A professor who studies steroid cases said the flurry of plea bargains that will result in probation and fines undercuts the high-profile national crackdown on performance-enhancing drugs pushed by President Bush in his State of the Union address last year . . .

Admir "Dado" Kantarevic, a Des Moines personal trainer, is scheduled to plead guilty Dec. 13 to misdemeanor possession charges. That will follow similar pleas from Milos Sarcev , a former Mr. Yugoslavia and Mr. Universe, and Dennis James, an eighth-place finisher in the 2004 Mr. Universe competition. The three had each faced up to five years in prison for allegedly being involved in a conspiracy to import anabolic steroids to Des Moines. Sarcev and James were fined and put on probation last week on reduced charges.

"The government's got their convictions, and we got a deal that we could live with that will allow Dennis to go on with his life and his career," said Paul Scott, James' attorney. Rick Collins, Sarcev's attorney, declined to comment about the case, which took shape not long after Bush, in his 2004 State of the Union address, said: "Get rid of steroids now."

Michael McCann, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law, said the outcomes send a mixed message to teenage athletes. "Certainly, we're doing more about that than we used to. But it seems as if the initial press conference and the arrest are dwarfed by the subsequent reaction," McCann said. "I still think there's value to doing the initial splash, but it undercuts the message. If we're going to arrest people, then you think it would be worth prosecuting them and sending them to prison."

But a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Des Moines balked at a suggestion that the probe, which drew attention from sports journalists intrigued by an alleged connection to the BALCO drug scandal in California, is letting offenders off lightly. "I don't think we ever said this case was the biggest case ever prosecuted in the Southern District of Iowa," spokesman Al Overbaugh said. "Maybe people built up a higher expectation than they had a right to."

In my law review article Dietary Supplement Labeling: Cognitive Biases, Market Manipulation & Consumer Choice, I discuss anabolic steroids and how children's usage patterns are influenced by role-modeling. I also discuss how policy-makers and law enforcement officials should carefully consider their messages to consumers, and how high-profile steroid arrests followed by far less enthusastic prosecutions may cause one to reconsider why the defendant was arrested in the first place. The article appeared earlier in Volume 31 of Boston University School of Law's American Journal of Law and Medicine (summer, 2005).

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