The State - News from Jan. 5, 1989

Convicted steroid trafficker David Jenkins spent the holidays at a minimum-security prison camp after the federal judge who sentenced him intervened on his behalf in “an unusual and surprising” move, a source within the Justice Department said. Jenkins, a member of Britain’s 1972 Olympic silver medal 400-meter relay team, spent only one week at San Diego’s Metropolitan Correctional Center after being sentenced to seven years. U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving ordered a speed-up of paper work that normally takes six weeks to two months to get Jenkins out of the center--a facility he once said he “feared and loathed”--and placed at Federal Prison Camp, Boron, in the desert west of Barstow. Boron is a less-restrictive facility for prisoners without a history of violence, sex offenses or escape attempts, federal prison officials said. “That judge must really like Jenkins to go the extra mile for him like that,” the Justice Department source said.