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.
