Floyd Landis Sentenced For Hacking Test Lab 173
McGruber writes with some news that slipped by in December: "Floyd Landis won the 2006 Tour de France, but was later stripped of his title after testing 'positive for an unusually high ratio of the hormone testosterone to the hormone epitestosterone (T/E ratio).' In February 2010, Slashdot covered the news that Landis had been accused of hacking into the laboratory that detected the unusually high T/E ratio. Since then, Landis was 'convicted in absentia by a French court for his role in hacking into the computers of a French doping lab,' according to National Public Radio. Landis and his former coach Arnie Baker both received 12-month suspended sentences, according to USA Today."
Re:The important part is missing from the summary (Score:5, Informative)
"Judges said that although no evidence directly linked Messrs. Landis and Baker to the hacking of the antidoping lab, both men benefited from the illegal intrusion."
So, basically, anyone who benefits from a crime is somehow culpable whether or not they actually had anything to do with it.
Gotta love that French "justice" system...
So some clueless blogger totally misrepresent the case and the submitter gives it a flat out wrong headline.
Landis, a known lying doper and cheater, hasn't been convicted for hacking, but for being in possession of stolen documents. Landis, when he was still lying about his doping, was showing these documents to everyone interested, claiming that they showed his innocence, so there is no arguments about him being in possession of these documents.
So Landis escaped a hacking charge and mere got a sentence for being in possession of stolen documents. I am sure that any US citizen publicly showing medical lab records stolen in an hacking accident, would get into trouble with US laws, and rightly so.
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Regards
Re:The important part is missing from the summary (Score:5, Informative)
That's what happens when you refuse to show up for your trial. It is presumed that whatever evidence the prosecution introduces is as they say it is, as nobody says otherwise.
In civil court that happens every day in the US.
Re:The important part is missing from the summary (Score:5, Informative)
There was one positive test and there wasn't the normal second sample to validate against. The French paper managed to dig up results that weren't supposed to be released of a B sample that tested positive. The reason he wasn't charged was that there was supposed to be a second sample that could be used to verify that the sample hadn't been contaminated.
It has nothing to do with a ban on retro testing and everything to do with the poor quality of evidence.
Personally, I think he probably did it, but in civilized society you can't randomly lower the bar because you didn't get the result you wanted.
Re:You left one out: (Score:2, Informative)
Since always, the fag is not sacred.
Convicted for embarrassing the WADA (Score:5, Informative)
Landis is being punished for daring to defy the anti-doping authorities, insist on his rights to a public hearing (no longer allowed), and embarrassing the hell out of the USADA and WADA by absolutely demolishing their scientific credibility with regard to the testosterone case (after they had to dig in their heels because they had already illegally released the preliminary reports, pre-B sample test to the media). I would note that in the original (and appealed) decisions, the panels through out the initial T-E ratio test as being hopelessly compromised. The mass spectrometry tests were allowed to stand, despite being the quality of lab work that would get laughed out of a college chemistry class, because both panels chose to totally disregard the testimony of John Amory. (see: http://rant-your-head-off.com/WordPress/?p=383 [rant-your-head-off.com] or http://trustbut.blogspot.com/2008/12/winnowing-john-amory.html [blogspot.com])
Now, as it turned out, Landis later admitted to doping with HGH that season, and testosterone in previous seasons. But I really think that's incidental to this case. He's being punished because he showed the WADA and UCI are just as corrupt as the cyclists, and the Chatenay-Malabry lab technicians are too incompetent to run a mass spectrometer that undergraduates successfully use thousands of times a day in research labs.
Re:The important part is missing from the summary (Score:2, Informative)
No, what happens when you refuse to show up for a criminal trial is that it's adjourned. If you were absent without good reason then you can enjoy being charged for failing to turn up. If you don't make yourself known then you'll be arrested and forced to turn up.
Nothing else is presumed about your absence because it goes against natural justice to convict you without the opportunity to defend yourself.
Civil trials, where the purpose is to provide specific compensation for loss rather than to protect society, are a completely different matter.
I can't speak for non-common-law jurisdictions. Some of them deliver something very much unlike justice.
Re:You left one out: (Score:2, Informative)
No freedom to practice your religion without interference from the state. Muslim women can't wear the burqa in public. Jewish schoolboys can't wear the yarmulke in public schools while Christians are prohibited from wearing "large" crosses. In the name of secularism French society has crossed the line into intolerance and forced compliance with the tyranny of the majority.
You're an idiot. Study the word laic before writing nonsense.
French institutions are laic, and that includes the public school system.
On the other hand you can bloody worship whoever or whatever you want in your private sphere.
In the US on the other hand, you mix religion and politics like ice and whiskey.
So you're the last people that should speak about the benefits of a laic state.
Ryan Braun is disputing a similar result (Score:5, Informative)
Braun Banned for PEDs [baseballprospectus.com]
What does this have to do with Floyd Landis? Just that epi/natural testosterone comparisons aren't cut and dried, and that the French do like to find winning non-French bikers to be dopers, and under the French Napoleonic code of justice you are guilty until proven innocent.
Re:The important part is missing from the summary (Score:2, Informative)
There is a reason "convicted in absentia" actually exists as a real legal thing.
You're probably looking for Federal Rule 43 of Criminal Procedure, clarified by the Supreme Court's opinion after Crosby in 1993. You can sometimes excuse yourself from a trial after it has commenced and it might be inferred that you're still in the courtroom but simply not saying anything, i.e. the trial continues as if you're there. But if you refuse to show up for a trial then, like I said, you will not be convicted in your absence.
Excusing yourself after the trial has begun, a voluntary decision made after you have been fully informed of proceedings, is completely different from simply not showing up. To lose the right to defend yourself without knowing what is going on, or because your excuse for being late wasn't quite good enough to satisfy a judge, would be to deny natural justice. The only way the court can be satisfied that you have had the chance to defend yourself is to require you to turn up - no number of snotty, officious French letters form an acceptable substitute. I'm not surprised that anyone defending the French system doesn't quite understand this.
Re:You left one out: (Score:4, Informative)
Laicism at its core is intolerance for religion; as long as its not state sponsored, and its not inconveniencing anyone, me displaying symbols of my religion (or lack thereof -- are atheist bumper stickers illegal in France?) shouldn't be any of the state's business.
That's exactly wrong. Laicism is about the state not sponsoring any religion. So the "as long as it is not state sponsored" itself is contradicting Laicism, because the state is explicitely forbidden to sponsor religion.
And that means that showing religious symbols in state operated buildings is considered advertisement of religion and this is frowned upon there (not in the public itself, just on governmental premises).
The case is differently with the burqa, because hiding your face in public is considering wearing a mask, and this runs afoul the ban on concealment. The same is valid for ski masks, or motorcycle helmets or whatever. The burqa is not any different from a legal viewpoint.