Today’s session of the Floyd Landis hearings started with Floyd Landis undergoing cross examination by Matthew Barnett. Try as I might, the best I can do on the live feed is to see the slides (by manually refreshing the page every so often), but not the video. As I expected, a lot of people tuned in. I thought I’d gotten in early enough. Oh well, there’s always the summaries at Trust But Verify.
Barnett is a cagey lawyer. He spent a lot of time building up to asking Landis about some blood samples. He asked a similar question of Dr. John Amory yesterday. From TBV’s summary/color commentary, it appears that the blood work that Barnett is interested in comes from the UCI. Team Landis says they have not received any of this information, and have also protested that this is part of a matter that hasn’t been decided. Perhaps they’re referring to the motion in limine that they made to exclude certain evidence.
This appears to be an attempt by Barnett to bring some evidence in through the back door. What exactly this evidence could contribute to the case is a bit of a mystery. If blood had been drawn from Landis prior to the start of Stage 17 or at the end, then we would know about it, and it would be part of the case. I don’t know if blood tests done for anti-doping purposes look for testosterone or any of its metabolites or precursors, but I rather doubt that’s the case. My suspicion is that Barnett is trying to build a non-analytical positive case, hoping that Landis’ hematocrit exceeds WADA’s cutoff level so that he can argue blood doping or EPO use.
Questioning turns to the Internet posts and the LeMond incident. Landis explains that Will Geoghegan had Greg LeMond’s phone number because the two synchronized their cell phones on a regular basis. Barnett is asking a lot of questions, but the one question that seems pertinent to the case is whether Landis ever took performance enhancing drugs. Granted that Howard Jacobs already covered that ground on Saturday, but the questioning by Barnett is going into everything but the actual case.
As one comment at TBV says:
There’s an adage in the law that says,
“if you don’t have the facts, argue the law;
if you don’t have the law, argue the facts;
and if you don’t have either, just argue!”
I think Barnett is living proof of the third option…
if you are a fan of Floyd and believe he is innocent,
this is a pretty amusing cross…
Right now, it appears as if there’s a recess going on. As the anonymous commenter at TBV suggests, if I could get in and actually listen to the cross examination, I might be amused. Barnett is certainly earning his keep today. I’m not sure if he’s actually done anything to strengthen USADA’s case, however.
Update: After the recess, Barnett asked a few more questions about various articles, nothing that seemed very substantial, from what I saw. Jacobs asked a few to strengthen Landis’ responses to questions about some riders who were involved in doping scandals during his time on the Phonak team. I’m not seeing any earthshattering revelations in any of the questions or answers, although perhaps Barnett will try to weave some of Floyd’s answers into some broadly woven story come time to make closing arguments.
After the lunch break, Dr. Simon Davis will be on the stand. Check back later for more updates.
