Nulla poena sine lege

I gave up on track and field atheletics long ago. Nothing to do with the doping scandals, but I think it was when Carl Lewis retired, which if I am not mistaken also coincided with a introspective dawning of how unathletic I am. Marion Jones came in the limelight after this. She won 3 golds at the Sydney Olympics, which was unprecedented and also has never been done since. Despite widespread rumors of doping at the time, she cleared all the drug tests, and never actually failed a test till last year, when her first sample failed. She got reinstated when the B-sample was negative. So, technically, to date she never failed a test. She was rumored to be involved in the BALCO scandal, and coincidentally (or otherwise) her performances seemed to dwindle as the BALCO scandal started hitting the news coverage. Some said drugs (or the lack of them), some said injuries, some others said age. But the matter was soon laid to rest.

However, now she has come back in the news, as she has admitted using performance enhancing drugs knowingly. ( Read Here) And the question arises. What should be her punishment for taking performance enhancing drugs? Here's my stand. She might go to jail for lying to prosecutors, but you cannot take away her medals and her records. She may have cheated knowingly, but as far as the official method of verification goes, she cleared everything. She may have lost face morally and ethically, but the fact is that legally I don't think she can be touched as far as erasure of her records go. Whatever the substance was which was injected, there was no test for it at that time, so in theory it is legal at the time. That she knew it was cheating is an ethical question. Ex post facto law is illegal in most countries. I am not a lawyer, but I'm thinking if her medals are taken away, she could challenge in a court of law based on this theory, and have a credible defence.

If there was no punishment for the cream and clear at that time, you cannot punish her now because a punishment exists now.