SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal jury began deliberating track coach Trevor Graham's fate on Tuesday, deciding whether he lied to investigators about his role in a steroids distribution case and if those statements hindered the federal probe.

Prosecutors accuse Graham of orchestrating a doping scheme for elite athletes, including as Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, and then lying to cover it up when questioned by two IRS agents. Graham faces three counts of lying to investigators.

"This really is a very simple case," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Parrella told the jury. "The defendant made these statements, he made them to Agent (Jeff) Novitzky and Agent (Erwin) Rogers. He knew they were lies at the time he made them. There really is no question about that."

Defense attorney William Keane acknowledged that Graham "misspoke" when he denied meeting Angel "Memo" Heredia, a discus thrower from Texas who bought performance-enhancing drugs in Mexico and sold them to many star track athletes. Prosecutors produced photographs of the two together during a several-day visit to Heredia's house over Christmas in 1996.

But Keane said the prosecution did not prove the other two charges beyond a reasonable doubt -- whether Graham set up his athletes to receive drugs from Heredia and whether he talked to Heredia on the phone after 1997.

Keane, who did not call any defense witnesses, attacked the credibility of Heredia and the five athletes who testified against Graham at the trial.

"You don't build a case on bad evidence after bad evidence and say at the end you have a lot of evidence," Keane said.

But Keane focused most of his closing argument on the issue of whether the statements Graham made to agents were material to their investigations into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, found to a drug distribution ring for elite athletes, and Jones, who later pleaded guilty to lying to BALCO agents.

Prosecutors rebutted that Graham's statements only had to be "capable" of influencing the investigation to be criminal. Because Graham was not truthful in the interview, investigators had to talk to additional witnesses and subpoena other information to make their case, Parrella argued.

During Graham's trial, prosecutors produced numerous witnesses, photographs and telephone records and FedEx receipts showing the track coach and Heredia shared a much deeper connection than Graham admitted. The jury reviewed evidence of more than 100 calls made from two of Graham's telephones to Heredia's house and photographs showing the two together in Texas.

The jury also heard tapes of a few calls made between Graham and Heredia in 2006 when the prosecution said the two talked about how to cover up their roles in the case.

In addition, Olympic gold medal sprinters Antonio Pettigrew, Jerome Young and Dennis Mitchell and two other athletes testified that Graham introduced them to Heredia and encouraged them to buy and use performance-enhancing drugs. It was Pettigrew's first public admission of drug use and has placed the gold medal he won as part of the 1,600-meter relay team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in jeopardy.

Finally, Heredia testified that he shipped a steady supply of drugs to Graham in Raleigh, N.C., and had the FedEx receipts to prove it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Finigan acknowledged that Heredia made "a lot of inconsistent statements." But Heredia's testimony was corroborated by the testimony from the athletes and the documentary evidence submitted in the case, Finigan said.

Graham played a key role in the investigation into BALCO when he sent federal doping officials in 2003 a vial of the then-undetectable steroid, "the clear." Investigators traced the syringe back to BALCO, which was found to have distributed performance-enhancing drugs to numerous elite athletes in baseball, track and field, football and other sports.

The prosecution argued that it was not a selfless deed of a whistleblower but was meant to eliminate competition provided by BALCO.

"This defendant, all he was doing was diming out another drug dealer," Parrella said.