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Montgomery pleads innocent, denied bond on heroin charges
AFP
Published: Tuesday May 6, 2008


Disgraced former 100-meter world record-holder Tim Montgomery pleaded innocent to heroin distribution charges Tuesday and had a trial set for July 9 after a federal judge denied him bail.

The Virginian-Pilot reported that US District Court Judge F. Bradford Stillman called the 33-year-old sprinter, whose career ended with a 2005 doping ban, a danger to the community and a risk to flee in denying the bond request.

Montgomery will remain in Portsmouth city jail after his arrest last week on charges of dealing more than 100 grams of heroin in the past year. Prosecutors denied four sales Montgomery allegedly made in the bond hearing.

Montgomery also faces sentencing May 16 in New York after pleading guilty in a check fraud scheme. He could received up to 46 months in prison on those charges.

Marion Jones, the mother of Montgomery's son Tim Jnr, is in jail after pleading guilty to charges in the check fraud scheme and perjury for lying to federal investigators when she denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

Jones was forced to surrender the five medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics after admitting she was a dope cheat.

Montgomery's 2005 ban, based upon evidence linking him to once-undetectable steroids in the BALCO scandal, wiped out his world-record 100-meters time of 9.78 seconds from September of 2002.

Neither he nor Jones ever tested positive.

Montgomery won 2000 Sydney Olympic gold in the 4x400 relay and a silver medal in the same event in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics.