3 Former S. Carolina Coaches Sentenced : 4- to 6-Month Stays in Halfway House Are Given in Steroids Case

Three former South Carolina football coaches were sentenced today to terms ranging from three months to six months in a halfway house for their convictions stemming from the use and distribution of steroids in the athletic department.

U.S. District Judge G. Ross Anderson also sentenced a Maryland man convicted of similar charges to a three-month term at a community security facility.

Former coach Tom Kurucz, who pleaded guilty June 1 to one misdemeanor count of dispensing steroids to players and a felony county of lying to a grand jury, received the harshest sentence: six months in a halfway house and three years’ probation.

Former coaches Jim Washburn and Keith Kephart, along with John L. Carter of Bethesda, Md., were each sentenced to three months in a halfway house and given three-year probationary terms.

Assistant U.S. Atty. John Barton said he is satisfied with the sentences.

“I think what our investigation uncovered was very serious,” Barton said. “But it was probably less than what was played up in the press.”

Kephart, Kurucz and Washburn declined comment.

Carter also declined comment, but one of his attorneys, Mitchell Rubenstein, said he is disappointed with the sentence and believes that his client should not have to serve any time.

Carter pleaded guilty on June 19 to two misdemeanor counts of providing the muscle-building drug to former Gamecock football player Tommy Chaikin.

It was Chaikin’s story in Sports Illustrated on Oct. 24 last year that prompted a grand jury probe of alleged steroid use within the school’s athletic department.