Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 15, 2008
Investigating the Investigators

Frank Bowman, a former prosecutor, pens an excellent article at Slate on why the DOJ is doing a poor job in the steroid investigation. I agree with Mr. Bowman on this:

That said, the Justice Department has mishandled the baseball steroid investigation in two important ways. First, the DoJ is prosecuting, or at least focusing on, the wrong people. The primary targets should be players, not suppliers. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice had no business feeding Mitchell, and through him the public, damaging information about players it lacks the evidence or the will to prosecute.

According to reporting by the New York Daily News, the FBI had the goods on McGwire and Canseco in the 1990s, but prosecuted the dealers instead. If those two had gone to jail then, we might not be going through the misery of today.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:26 AM | Cheating | TrackBack (0)
Comments

why insn't MLB security director Kevin hallinan testifying? I would love to have Bud Selig be forced to take a deposition BEFORE testifying as to "what did he know and when did he know it?", since the FBI claimed to have told MLB security of the problem in the past.

Posted by: rmt at January 15, 2008 09:03 AM

I have a hard time believing that a former federal prosecutor would make the same stupid mistake about HGH that everyone else in the media is making. He says:

"Taken without a prescription, anabolic steroids and human growth hormone are every bit as illegal as cocaine, heroin, or marijuana."

Once again, this is wrong. HGH is NOT on the schedule III list and was not included in the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990. The laws that tried to make HGH a schedule III controlled substance did not pass. It is NOT illegal to take HGH or to possess HGH for personal use. It is ONLY illegal to distribute HGH or possess with the intent to distribute.

Perhaps this explains why the federal gov't was going after HGH distributors, instead of users? Or maybe that explains what he is a "former" federal prosecutor?

I do agree with him about the use of DOJ plea bargaining to assist Mitchell. There needs to be a fraud, waste and abuse discussion and someone needs to be disbarred. I'm also disappointed that he didn't take on the practice of leaking names from the Albany D.A.'s office, which just plain seems unprofessional.

Posted by: SleepyCA at January 15, 2008 03:59 PM

The thing is, there's no proof that would stand up in a court of law. "Unnamed sources" saying x used steroids is not particularly credible.

Posted by: JeremyR at January 15, 2008 06:02 PM
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