By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2007

After seven years and nearly 40 arbitration hearings, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency finally lost a case -- to four third-year law students and a law professor working for free.

Sprinter LaTasha Jenkins, who faced a two-year competition ban, learned late Wednesday that she had been found not guilty of an alleged doping offense from July 22, 2006, and was invited to return to competition immediately, attorney Michael Straubel said yesterday.

Jenkins, 29, a former NCAA champion in the 200 meters and a former world indoor silver medalist, had tested positive for the steroid nandrolone during a meet in Belgium. Straubel and the students in his independent study class had argued during an October arbitration that she was a victim of a laboratory error.

In a decision that shocked even Straubel, the director of the University Law Clinic at Valparaiso University, a three-person arbitration panel agreed. It ruled the two European laboratories that handled her urine samples violated World Anti-Doping Agency standards and the case should be thrown out, Straubel said.

The world track and field federation (IAAF) has 30 days to decide whether it will appeal the result. The IAAF could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Since the positive test was announced and Nike voided her contract, Jenkins has been working full time as a lab technician in Raleigh, N.C., Straubel said. She plans to return to track and field and hopes to compete at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

"I didn't expect to win, but I actually thought we had a chance," Straubel said. "I just thought our argument, to an objective person, made sense. [But] I'm quite shocked."

USADA's streak of dominance had stretched from its creation in 2000, and it included a victory this past summer over cyclist Floyd Landis.

The agency, which oversees drug-testing operations for U.S. Olympic sports, had credited its success in hearings to its meticulous approach. Only after an internal anti-doping review board considers the evidence does USADA bring doping charges. Some attorneys, however, have argued that the anti-doping system is so stacked against athletes that they have almost no chance of overturning positive test results even if they are innocent.

The panel notified Jenkins of its ruling in a letter and indicated a formal decision would be available in January. Travis Tygart, USADA's chief executive, declined to comment.

After talking to several attorneys last summer, Jenkins concluded she could not afford to fight the positive test. But she was referred to Straubel, and he turned her defense into something of a class project.

Straubel and his students argued that Jenkins's doping positive was invalid because both halves of her urine sample (an athlete's sample is split into an A and B sample and each is tested separately) were examined by the same lab personnel at WADA-accredited labs in Ghent, Belgium, and Cologne, Germany. WADA rules require that different personnel examine the A and B samples to ensure that mistakes aren't repeated.