mag900 wrote:
Wow. A non-lawyer pretending to be a lawyer who has absolutely no idea what he/she is talking about. How about you do everyone on here a favor and talk to someone who actually knows something about the American legal system before you feel the urge to spout off a bunch of tripe. There are many laws that are entirely UNREASONABLE. Regardless, there USADA isn't a US court of law. It's an entity created to enforce non-law rules in sports and has its own set of standards that have nothing to do with the legal system.
Hey now, no need to get angry about it, I'm just trying to shed some light on the mystery of why this athlete didn't get banned. There sure are plenty of
Per Se violations in the law, but that's far from the norm. And it's not about the law being unreasonable, it's about the actions of the accused being reasonable under the circumstances.
And regardless of whether or not I claim to be an attorney on an internet forum, you don't have to take my word for it! Look it up yourself, reasonableness is well established as one of (if not the) most important single factors in all forms of law. I like the way it was put on Yale's Law School website, "Law students discover very early in their legal educations that the "reasonable person" is a ubiquitous fixture of the law." (
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3713/)
And, relevant to this discussion because we are discussing a form of negligence (can be found verbatim in almost any legal dictionary): "In the law of negligence, the reasonable person standard is the standard of care that a reasonably prudent person would observe under a given set of circumstances."
But to your point, you're right, USADA doesn't have laws, they have a code. They aren't subject to due process laws and such, so they are exempt from most of these concerns up front. There is an arbitration process, but I have no experience with that and have no clue if they would consider any factor that isn't explicitly defined in the contract. My point is that USADA made the decision to not ban the athlete, as far as anyone has shown here that is outside the norm. Therefore they made a discretionary decision (as opposed to just applying the standard sanction), and if a decision was made that means they considered other factors, and if they considered other factors then the reasonableness of the athlete's actions were certainly considered.
And out of curiosity I just looked up the WADA code to see where they are allowed to consider other factors, and here you go:
Quote:
However, depending on the
unique facts of a particular case, any
of the referenced illustrations could
result in a reduced sanction under
Article 10.5 based on No Significant
Fault or Negligence.
Quote:
10.5.1.1 Specified Substances
Where the anti-doping rule violation
involves a Specified Substance, and the
Athlete or other Person can establish
No Significant Fault or Negligence, then
the period of Ineligibility shall be, at a
minimum, a reprimand and no period
of Ineligibility, and at a maximum, two
years of Ineligibility, depending on the
Athlete’s or other Person’s degree of
Fault.
It appears as though this athlete was able to show no significant fault or negligence, so I guess her story about being told such low doses don't require TUEs must have been accepted.
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