5:41 PM: Leaders of the Major League Baseball Players Association said today they hope a ruling by a federal court in San Francisco on the confidentiality of drug tests taken in 2003 will end a five-year battle between players and U.S. prosecutors.
MLBPA Executive Director Donald Fehr and General Counsel Michael Weiner said in a statement, “We are very gratified by this decision and hope that this will finally bring this long litigation to a close.”
The two also warned, “Anyone who leaks information purporting to contain those 2003 test results is committing a crime.”
The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could, however, be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jack Gillund, a spokesman for prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco, said, “We are reading the decision and reviewing our options.”
An 11-judge panel of the appeals court ruled by a 9-2 vote that prosecutors are not entitled to keep positive steroids test results for about 100 Major League Baseball players that investigators in a sports drug probe seized from a private laboratory in 2004.
The court majority upheld a federal trial judge’s determination that “the government callously disregarded the affected players’ constitutional rights.”
The testing was initiated by Major League Baseball in 2003 and was intended to be anonymous, for the purpose of determining of whether steroid use was a significant problem requiring further testing. The testing was coordinated by Long Beach-based Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc. and carried out by Quest Diagnostics in Las Vegas.
But during an investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, prosecutors obtained a warrant for the records of 10 players suspected of using steroids.
The prosecutors also seized computer records of hundreds of other Major League Baseball players and professional athletes and reportedly found names and urine samples of about 100 other baseball players who had tested positive.
In today’s ruling, the court said the government could not keep the records of players not specifically named in the warrant.
Prosecutors argued that the capture of data on the additional players was justified by a doctrine known as “in plain view,” under which law enforcement officers can seize evidence of a crime that is in plain view.
But the appeals court said it was not fair to use that doctrine in a search of a computer database.
Chief Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote, “This was an obvious case of overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data as to which it lacked probable cause.”
The court said that in similar computer searches in the future, the relevant information must be separated out by either an independent third party or specialized government staff who would give investigators only the data covered by a search warrant.
The decision was made in three related cases filed in federal courts in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Nevada.
The expanded appeals panel overturned a decision in which a three-judge panel of the court ruled by a 2-1 vote last year that prosecutors could keep the additional data.
Ethan Balogh, a lawyer for Comprehensive Drug Testing, said, “We’re obviously quite gratified by the decision.”
12:39 PM: A U.S. appeals court ruled in San Francisco today that federal prosecutors are not entitled to keep positive steroids test results for about 100 Major League Baseball players tested in 2003.
An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court judge’s determination that “the government callously disregarded the affected players’ constitutional rights.”
The testing was initiated by Major League Baseball in 2003 and was carried out by an independent laboratory. It was intended to be anonymous, for the purpose of determining of whether steroid use was a significant problem requiring further testing.
But during an investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, prosecutors obtained a warrant for the records of 10 players, including former San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds, suspected of using steroids.
The prosecutors also seized computer records of hundreds of other Major League Baseball players and reportedly found names and urine samples of about 100 other players who had tested positive.
In today’s ruling, the court said the government could not keep the records of players not specifically named in the warrant.
Prosecutors argued that the capture of data on the additional players was justified by a doctrine known as “in plain view,” under which law enforcement officers can seize evidence of a crime that is in plain view.
But the appeals court said it was not fair to use that doctrine in a search of a computer database.
Chief Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote, “This was an obvious case of overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data as to which it lacked probable cause.”
The court said that in similar computer searches in the future, the relevant information must be separated out by either an independent third party or specialized government staff who would give investigators only the data covered by a search warrant.
The decision was made in three related cases filed in federal courts in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Nevada.
The case could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jack Gillund, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco, said, “We are reading the decision and reviewing our options.”
