Marion Jones, 32, ended her 6-month prison term on Friday, September 5, when she was released from a community corrections center in San Antonio, Texas, USA.
In January, Jones was also sentenced to a two-year probation after her release, with 800 hours of community service.
Marion, a wife and mother of two boys, began her sentence in March at a federal prison at Fort Worth, Texas.
Last October she pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury – for lying to federal investigators over steroid use during a federal investigation of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), and about what she knew of the connection of her ex-boyfriend, Tim Montgomery, to a cheque fraud scam.
In the wake of the scandal, Jones returned the five medals (three gold) she won at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Jones, a basketball star at the University of North Carolina, began demonstrating her athletic prowess in the world of track and field as a teenager.
Jones has claimed that she never intentionally took illegal steroids. She has said that her former coach, Trevor Graham, had deceived her into taking “the clear,” telling her instead that he was giving her flaxseed oil. She later learned that it was not what the coach had claimed.
“I want people to understand that everybody makes mistakes,” Marion had said on the Oprah Winfrey Show in January. “To me it’s about—I truly think that a person’s character is determined by admission of their mistakes, and then beyond that, what do I do about it? You know, how can I change the lives of people, how can I use my story to change the lives of a young person? And to me, it’s really about looking forward, looking to the future. How can I make this wrong a right?”