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| Sports Nut Pee Brain Should Ryan Braun get out of a drug suspension because of a urine collector's tiny mistake? Posted Friday, Feb 24, 2012, at 05:55 PM ET  Ryan Braun, reigning National League MVP, was suspended by Major League Baseball for 50 games after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug—and now he's off the hook on a technicality. By a vote of two to one, a panel of arbitrators overturned the suspension because the tester who collected Braun's urine put it in his fridge instead of sending the sample to the lab right away, as he couldn't find a FedEx store that was open on a Saturday night. According to Yahoo's Jeff Passan, the tester's behavior was "standard-operating procedure in every major doping program across the world." Nevertheless, Braun's attorneys argued successfully that the fridge storage was a violation of the agreed-upon protocol—"absent unusual circumstances," urine samples were supposed to go to the lab on the day they were collected. Does Braun's escape serve the interests of justice, no matter how bad it makes Major League Baseball look? Or do we all lose when someone who seems guilty gets off due to a procedural screw up? On the one hand, MLB agreed to the rules for handling samples and then broke them. On the other, Braun can now proclaim his innocence when it doesn't seem he was proven innocent at all. This is a classic legal debate between strictly enforcing procedural rights and worrying more about the substance of guilt and innocence than process. The framers of our Constitution came down squarely on the side of procedural protections ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Why Has the Syrian Uprising Been Such a Dud on Facebook and Twitter? Finally, New Laws That Give Nannies and Maids Real Legal Rights Muckreads: Dissing Reagan, Loving Government. Archives Reveal the Other Side of Newt. | Advertisement   |
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