Friday, May 18, 2007

Hue - Landis Case Observations

Landis calls his first witness, Dr Goldberger. Jacobs examines him. They are using him to give expert opinion about the various lab practices at LNDD and their relationship to International Lab Standards. He directs forensic toxicology. He has helped to daft lab standards on a committee with Larry Bowers of USADA (who was the Chair). He was a certified lab inspector to make sure labs met the applicable standards in the United States.

He calls the chromatograph from the Montreal WADA lab "beautiful". Dr Ayotte smiles. she seems pleased with the compliment. Larry Bowers has moved up to counsel table to help the USADA lawyers. WADA lab head from UCLA Prof. Hensen moves up to the USADA lawyers table to speak to Bowers.

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He has testified as an expert in hundreds of court proceedings and it shows. he jumps out of the witness box and goes right up to the big screen projection image and is pointing out difficulties he sees with the LNDD chromatogram. He thinks it is bad chromatography, conceeding that the way it was drawn may favor Landis. He likes the Montreal chromatograms much better and says those chromatograms show that it can be done correctly.

This is an attack on the epitestoterone and testosterone peaks as indentified byLNDD and thus the ratio they determined. He favors viewing 3 ions as opposed to the single ion used by LNDD. His view is that the conclusions reached by LNDD are not supported by the chemistry.
He says this is the only lab he has seen using a single ion to identify the testosterone and epitestosterone.

He also doesn't like the chain of custody or the cross outs. He would look closer at a lab if he saw documentation with such traits. He wants his labs to meet "forensic standards".

I'll yield to TBV on the science here and will chime in should legal matters be raised.

Dr Goldberger is a very professional witness. He has been around a hearing room before and his testimony doesn't need translation. all that is advantagious in terms of presentation.

Apparantly the parties were aware that Dr Goldberger had to leave this evening. Mr Brunet is tired and would like to stop. I don't blame him. Time was taken on the Papp examination including his consultation with his own attorney so we are rushing through this scientific testimony. Someone said my "bias" on the Papp issue was sad. What is sad is that time was spent sacrificing Papp for whatever reason while we hurry through this testimony.

The cross by Young (he's a great lawyer) establishes that Goldberger send his testosterone cases out of his lab because he doesn't do them. His doc pacs are 30 to 500 pages long. No one has ever asked him for electronic data files but he has them, going back 10 years. The vigorous Matthew Barnett jumps in but Young can handle this much more effectively and Barnett is over-ruled by the Panel, again.

He is not accredited by WADA or ISO. Only the WADA people are. They are here, the lab head at WADA UCLA at USADA counsel table, the Montreal WADA head as a USADA witness and the head of the WADA lab in Rome assisting the Panel as an "Independant expert".

Bower's committee put together a chain of custody rule set and Young suggests the chain of custody Goldberger does is merely suggested by the "guideline" and that document does not apply to LNDD because it is subject to the ISO requirement.

Jacobs is up, redirecting on "sloppiness" and confirming the "peak" testimony was not confused by Goldberger as suggested by young.

Watching Young and Jacobs or Young and Suh or Suh and Dunn or Dunn and Jacobs is a pleasure.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Landis is definitely getting his money's worth with Dr. Goldberger.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Goldberger just blew away the credibility of ANY LNDD test results.

Anonymous said...

OK, here's my favorite part:

Young is trying to imply that Goldberger lacks qualifications to interpret testosterone tests because he doesn't do them on a regular basis. To which Goldberger produces a letter offering him employment as the head of the UCLA lab. So, he's good enough to run the UCLA lab, but not good enough to give an opinion at this hearing?

Great stuff.

Anonymous said...

Can anyone explain the posturing going on by the lawyers on both sides here? For example, when Suh was belittling Papp, asking if he had ridden in the TdF in 2006, then asking about 2005, then asking about 2004, etc. when Papp had already said he had never ridden in TdF? That may be effective when you're playing to a jury full of checkout clerks from the nearest Kroger, but what's the point when you are talking to a jaded panel that has heard it all before? Can these lawyers just not help themselves?

Anonymous said...

Ahhhh. Reading all this about Dr. Goldberg's testimony just made my day! I think I'm gonna sleep well tonight.

Camille

Anonymous said...

Can someone please pass the word on to Floyd that the smirking like the Cheshire Cat is not attractive.

Anonymous said...

sad day for USADA.

Ayotte gives it in the end.

Papp gets smeared...and set-up for a trafficing charge ..gulp..

Goldberger then proceeds to decimate the T/E and disembowel the LNDD screen/conf.

If this is what is in store for the IRMS portion, USADA better be packing their briefs and start chumming up to Goldberger, the potential successor of the UCLA Lab.

Also, nice work Mr. dB and to Judge Hue. Great, great job.

Anonymous said...

After the puerile drama of yesterday, I must say that this is a refreshing change back to facts and science and, even better, they're in favor of Landis.

And, of course, big thanks to you guys for providing excellent coverage.

Landis FTW!