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Could use of steroids by high school athletes permanently impair their judgment

By Steve Lombardi

Their use has tainted the reputation of many professional athletes. Their prevalence in professional sports has caused drug screenings to become more commonplace today than at any other time. Their effects are suggesting to us that they are more than performance-enhancing. Steroids are growing in popularity among both professional and amateur athletes and some research suggests that no sport is truly free of their taint. Some professional sports leagues have banned the use of all steroids while others have instituted harsh penalties for athletes, trainers and coaches who are found to be using or administering the drugs.

For many people, talk of steroids reminds them of anti-drug campaigns from school where the girls were taught that steroid use would lead to the growth of facial hair and the deepening of the voice while boys were told they would grow breasts and see their genitals shrink. However, there are much more serious side effects that occur with the use of steroids such as jaundice, liver tumors and high blood pressure. There is also emerging research which suggests that steroid use may also lead to a range of psychological side effects, some of which may become serious. The severity of symptoms varies by individual but the general findings are that use of anabolic steroids comes with some side effect. Some research has suggested that long-term users of steroids may experience delusions, impaired judgment and extreme jealousy and irritability; many of us have seen such stories and sound bytes on the news labeled as 'roid rage'. The problem with much of the research is that it is preliminary and it generally compares steroid users to non-steroid users instead of comparing different steroid users to each other (see ). If this initial research is true, however, and if it is really on to something, the side effects of steroids may have an impact on our justice system.

In the United States, we require people who are convicted of a crime to have demonstrated the proper mental state for that crime. This generally means that a person has to have known that they were doing something wrong, intended to do something wrong, have known that what they were doing was likely to lead to something illegal or criminal but to disregard to the risk or to have been completely unaware of the risk even when they should have been. If someone does not have this requisite mental state for the crime of which they are being accused, often times a defendant cannot be convicted of the crime because that mental state is an element that must be proven. Sometimes, though, there are defenses to these mental states. The defense that most people are familiar with is the insanity defense which takes different forms in different states. At its most basic inception, it is merely that because of some sort of mental defect or disease, a person either did not know what they were doing was wrong at the time, they were unable to appreciate that it was wrong or they were unable to control their behavior.

There have been several instances in the past several years which have begun to suggest that the long-term use of anabolic steroids may decrease a person's mental capacity and in so doing, make them unable to appreciate the wrongness of their actions or even to control their actions. Chris Benoit is probably the most well-known recent case of a steroid user who appears to have suddenly snapped into an uncontrollable violent phase. In the summer of 2007, Benoit's wife was found strangled to death, their seven-year-old son was suffocated and Benoit himself had taken his own life by hanging himself from exercise equipment in their home. Steroids were found in the home and he had been a known user. Then, just last week a beloved high school football coach in Iowa, Ed Thomas, was shot and killed in the high school weight room by a former player, Mark Becker. Allegations and suspicions of drug use arose as evidence came to light that the suspect had a record of arrests for both assault and possession of drug paraphernalia. It's also been announced that Mark Becker will assert the defense of insanity.

Could this crime also be the result of the effects of steroids on the body and brain? Right now there is no evidence that I've seen to suggest this is true, but one has to ask the question with all that surrounds the community of this case. So I did ask myself if a person uses steroids and then commits a murder, would this be a defense to the crime of first-degree murder, for which Becker is charged. First degree murder is a crime which requires the defendant to have acted with the intent or knowledge that their conduct would result in death. Because this crime requires the specific intent of death of the victim, it is known as a specific intent crime and it does lend itself to the defense of insanity. If the preliminary research is correct and if the evidence of other violent episodes from steroid users is another indicator, it seems that there is a possible defense for steroid users who suffer these outbursts.

Do steroids permanently alter a person's state of mind?

There are likely two defenses that could be made; the first defense could be voluntary intoxication in which the defendant was under the effects of self-induced intoxication and the second defense would be insanity. Intoxication may not be as effective a defense as insanity because the evidence does not suggest that these outbursts or violent episodes occur only when a person currently has steroids in their system. Instead, the research seems to suggest that it is in fact the effects on brain chemistry over a long period of use that causes the violent episodes.

In Iowa, a person who is insane is defined as a person who 'suffers from such a diseased or deranged condition of the mind as to render the person incapable of knowing the nature and quality of the act the person is committing or incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to that act'. If in fact Mr. Becker did suffer from the side effects that come with long-term steroid use, he may be able to argue that the changes to his brain chemistry were just such a 'diseased' condition and that because of it; he was unable to tell that what he was doing was wrong. Iowa does not require that the condition have been present for any particular length of time before the crime and is only concerned with a person's condition at the time of the commission of the crime. The suggestion of using the insanity defense for person's whose mental disposition has been compromised because of steroids is not an attempt to allow these individuals to go free; on the contrary, a person who is convicted but offers an insanity defense generally either serves a sentence for a lesser crime, Mr. Becker's case, possibly second degree murder, or the defendant is placed in the custody of the state's psychiatric ward system.

The effects of a successful claim of insanity due to the long-term effects of steroid use would likely be profound. In this country, our criminal justice system does not wish to punish those who do not appreciate the wrongfulness of their conduct because it would defeat the purpose of both a retributive and deterrent system of punishment. Perhaps it would also alert the public, the sports industry and the drug companies who manufacture anabolic steroids to their serious risks. For Mr. Becker, it is too soon to know whether steroids or their use played any role in his attack on his former coach and for the Benoit family, it is too late to prevent a tragedy from occurring. There is currently no evidence to suggest Mr. Becker ever used steroids, but time will tell. We now know he is raising the insanity defense, but will part of the evidence indicate previous use of steroids.

Overall, the prospect that such a commonplace drug could render a person who is not even actively under its influence legally insane is one that is slightly frightening but one that must be explored. If it is true, then those defendants who have been rendered insane deserve a chance at justice through the defense while at the same time ensuring that we as a public understand the effects so that we can be sure we mete out justice accordingly and fairly by punishing those in accordance with what they deserve to be punished for.

For more on the effects of anabolic steroid use, please see Steroids, The Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

To donate to the Ed Thomas Memorial Trust Fund, please visit the Midwest One Bank in Parkersburg. The money donated will go the A-P Booster Club.

You can contact Midwest One Bank at 319-346-1645.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on July 22, 2009 (boomark / email).