MLB Bonds drug tests shouldn't be admissible

[Upton]

Interesting piece by Gwen Knapp in today's Chronicle:
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It's alarming that Major League Baseball drug tests on Barry Bonds from 2003 and 2006 could be used as evidence in his federal perjury and obstruction of justice trial. Results of both were released Wednesday, and Judge Susan Illston will rule Thursday on their admissibility.

If she allows them, the validity of all sports drug testing should be called into question. Players' unions and agents should call for the immediate suspension of all drug screening, and Olympic athletes should consider their own rebellion.

The very act of urinating into a cup to satisfy terms of employment straddles the line between an ugly necessity and a civil-liberties violation. But in sports, the benefits of drug testing - creating a disincentive for athletes to pump hormones, speed and blood thickeners into their bodies - outweigh the detriments.

But when the government gets its hands on tests that were given under an agreement of confidentiality, drug screening starts to resemble an end-around the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.


Of course, if recent history suggests anything, it's that Bonds, the pariah slugger, generates enough disgust to obscure any injustices his case might embed in the drug-testing process.

Besides, the principle here is a fine point. The government didn't search and seize Bonds' bodily fluids, and it isn't using the test results to incarcerate him for drug possession. It's simply saying that the tests suggest that he knew he was doping and illegally played dumb under oath.

But the 2003 sample absolutely was taken under false pretenses. Its appearance in the trial would effectively make Bonds' employers agents of the state. That's not MLB's job. In fact, if that duty is added to the responsibilities of drug screening, we're probably better off with dirty athletes.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/05/SPN315NNP3.DTL&feed=rss.sports

[BOSSHOG]

1. How bout his perjury?? Should that not be "admissable?"

I don't believe he should be "admissable" to the hall of fame.

[Upton]

2. The drug tests

the government is trying to use against Bonds, in order to prove his perjury..should have been destroyed in accordance with the original drug testing agreement between the players union and MLB.

[madinmaryland]

3. Why were the samples not destroyed?

[Onceuponalife]

4. Those damn unions

:P