Hue - Impressions From the Hearing Room
McLaren and Brunet chat and come into the hearing together or come in separate and immediately begin to converse. Campbell always comes in alone and the other two don't talk to him at all, although McLaren asked Campbell for a highlighter pen and some sticky pads today. They do this in the open and appearance of isolating one of the arbitrators doesn't seem to bother them. I've been on a 3 person Panel. If my collegues ignored me like that, I'd be saddened. Some may say Campbell isolates himself but that IS NOT my impression and believe me, I'm here and I'm looking and watching carefully.
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For all you guys who think the "hacked" LNDD documents were created by Landis' team, they are part of discovery sent to Landis by USADA and have been authenticated for use at trial. So much for the "reverse conspiracy theory". They are genuine.
Everyone in the case seems to have a bottled water all the time. The Panel have 2 each and there is at least two cases in the hearing room and a case in the Press room. The bottled water is Arrowhead and it is provided by the USOC. Perhaps fearing contamination or tainting, USADA officials and lawyers are not drinking the Arrowhead. They are drinking Aquafina. Larry Bowers drinks Coke (which owns Aquafina). Perhaps that is some sort of sponsorship issue.
Maurice Suh is an extreemly good trial lawyer. While he may not always have a perfect grasp of the application of some of the most technical scientific terminology (disturbing the wonks a little), he knows the science and he is a lawyer who isn't pretending to be a scientist. Howard Jacobs combines the science and the law a little better than Suh. I am impressed by his skill in that regard.
Richard Young is sort of frumpy in a Walter Matthau way. He strikes me as being an insurance defense type of lawyer. They don't care about the fit of their suit or the way their hair is cut as much as they delve deeply into the nuances of the case and the advocacy of that position. They get paid by the hour and not necessarily to win the case. Sometimes they are paid by the hour to minimize damages.
Todays cross of Brenna by Suh is some of the best lawyering I have ever seen. Both subtle and blunt, the examination revealed the intentional erasure of data multiple times, the people behind the erasure and USADA's role in trying to prevent Landis from knowledge of logs which would reveal those erasures and thus highly relevant aspects of the case. Rarely do you see a cross which is surgically as precise at that one was.
