Timothy P. Leahy, Maryland & Washington D.C. Attorney, can be contacted at (703) 850-7055.

Lance Armstrong is guilty of being a cheater. Not to long ago he was a sports champion, an inspiration to cancer survivors, their families, and a fundraiser who had done so much good.

Last year I wondered to what purpose his name was beign dragged throught the mud. Six of the seven cyclists who came in second to Armstrong in the Tour d’France have also been accused of, or admitted to, using performance enhancing drugs. That was Lance’s defense – everyone was doing it so he needed to level the playing field.

Taking performance enhancing drugs or doing something as weird as blood doping (giving yourself a compelte transfusion after a race) is not the message we want to send to our kids or athletes. Lance isn’t a hero but I don’t know that pursuing him so many years after the fact was in the public interest or hurting Armstrong’s ability to continue to do good work, fund raise, and help other cancer survivors.

 With 28 people dead anyone with a heart could only feel and pray for the families of the children murdered. How do the parents send their children back to school? How do parents not fear what could happen, again? There is talk of armed guards in every school and additional gun control laws. But will any of that work? The schools will have to figure out how to protect the children. The schools will need a plan. They need a plan to make sure that there isn’t an over-reaction where they do more harm than good. If a situation arises where the school believes that a child could be a threat, how do they handle that belief? How strong does that belief need to be? Does any belief warrant having the child arrested and treated like a criminal – without the child having first done anything wrong – and involuntarily evaluated over the parents objections? How will something like that affect a child?

 Parents rightly fear that someone will try to hurt their children. How far will we go to allow the school to take away a child – and a parent’s rights – to evaluate any potential threat? That’s another parent fear. There is a balance to be found and it needs to be found promptly.

Lawyers interviewing potential jury members always ask “Because the Defendant has been charged with a crime and in Court do you think that means he’s probably guilty?” Unfortunately, the answer is yes more often than a believer in fair trials would hope. This is true of Lance Armstrong, too.  Although he is a sports champion, an inspiration to cancer survivors, their families, and a fundraiser who has done so much good he is being dragged through the court of public opinion for allegedly using performance enhancing drugs years ago.

For what purpose? To strip him of his Tour d’France titles? Six of the seven cyclists who came in second to Armstrong have also been accused of, or admitted to, using performance enhancing drugs. To prove he did something wrong? The government dropped the criminal charges earlier this year as not enough evidence to criminally convict him. The U.S. Anti-Doping agency decided to pursue him administratively, where there is a lower standard of proof, and release its evidence to the public after Armstrong decided not to defend the administrative action. As a result he’s banned from competition which, as he’s retired, doesn’t result in real consequences for the sport. He has not been convicted as a criminal, but he is being treated as a criminal.

Because of the allegations, or the tireless pursuit of the allegations over the years, Armstrong stepped down from the Board of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, one of the country’s best known cancer charities. Nike and other sports sponsors dropped Armstrong. Who knows how the government’s decision will affect the work of the Foundation and Armstrong’s ability to fund raise for cancer research.

A criminal prosecutor typically has discretion with whether to pursue a case, drop it, or prosecute it depending on what is in the best interest of the public. Lance Armstrong isn’t a criminal but the way he has been treated is criminal. It’s a shame someone in the government didn’t take the time to step back, consider the public interest, consider how it might hurt Armstrong’s ability to continue to do good work, and drop the case before dragging him through the court of public opinion.

 Eight women’s doubles badminton players from China, South Korea, and Indonesia were disqualified from the 2012 Olympics after throwing matches in order to manipulate future match-up opponents. Although it was technically not illegal to attempt to lose on purpose the Olympic Committee decided it violated the spirit of competition and warranted their disqualification. I’ve often heard lawyers criticized for attempting to win a case on a technicality or by arguing that someone may have violated the spirit of the law but not the letter of the law. It doesn’t happen as often as people might think. Like the bad badminton players, most litigants will find that a case is won or lost based not on what they believe is right or wrong but on whether a judge or jury decides they actually did something wrong.

I wasn’t thinking about criminal law or reckless endangerment when I was watching Stage 14 of the Tour d’France until, at the top of the cyclists’ second mountain, one of the spectators threw sharp carpet tacks on the road and flatted 30 cyclists’ tires. Unbelievably dangerous and only by the grace of God not deadly. Robert Kiserlovski from Team Astana went off the road and broke his collarbone. The Tour d’ France at times has up to 198 riders together in a group and when one bike goes down it more often than not takes another bike down with it. As these riders coming down the mountain are going between 40 and 50 m.p.h. it’s easy to understand how easily someone could have died from doing something as stupid as throwing carpet tacks into the middle of a bike race. I don’t know French law but Maryland criminal law defines reckless endangerment as engaging in “conduct that creates a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury to another; . .” What happened at the Tour was clearly criminal and here’s hoping they put whoever did it in the dungeon of one of those scenic castles that the cyclists have been riding past.