Floyd's sole objective was to demonstrate his innocence, which he subsequently announced did not exist.
Some people still don’t get it. The purpose of a trial is NOT to demonstrate innocence. It is to determine whether there is enough evidence to establish guilt. Likewise, the purpose of a legal defense fund is NOT to vindicate someone who is innocent. It is to reduce the probability of there being sufficient evidence to establish guilt.
Individuals are of course free to view a trial as a demonstration of innocence, as vindication, etc. But this is their personal interpretation; it is not how the law sees it. If you get a verdict of not guilty, the law does not say you are innocent. The law does not say you are vindicated. That is just someone's spin on the verdict.
If I received money from donations, based upon telling people I had a fabricated disease, it would be illegal.
The fabrication of the disease is not illegal, but aquiring money based on the false claim is.
If Landis recived money based upon a defense that he hadn' t doped, he received that money dishonestly.
Nope. You still don’t get it. The first example is fraud, because you aren’t using the money to treat the disease. The second is not fraud because you are using the money for exactly what you say you are using it for.
A much closer analogy would be someone who asked for money to treat a disease, when he in fact knew it was incurable, and that there were very strong odds that he would die regardless of treatment. Is that fraud? I don’t know, but if we’re going to compare it to Floyd’s situation, we should stipulate that it is well-known that people with that disease almost always die. Perhaps the person assures donators that he has been told by doctors he has a better than average chance of surviving.
However, even that analogy doesn't capture the situation. In the medical example, the person who is asking for money is withholding information relevant to deciding how well spent that money will turn out to be. In Floyd's situation, this was not the case.
Floyd's defense was not that he hadn't doped. He said he didn't dope, but that wasn't his defense. His defense was a carefully constructed attack on the science that indicated he doped, and not a bad one under the circumstances. In the CAS appeal, he managed to get the elevated T/E thrown out. He put that money to very good use.
Most if not all of the money given to Floyd was donated after he put all the documents on the internet. At that point, his actual guilt/innocence was completely irrelevant to the outcome of the case. The outcome was going to be determined BY THOSE FACTS ALONE. So how could someone who donated to Floyd complain that he was cheated? Whether Floyd really doped or not was not going to affect the outcome of the case, which is to say, it did not affect how wise it was to donate the money.
I understand that some people might have donated not just to get Floyd off, but to make a statement. That the truth will out. Of course these people--who I think were all nickel and dime contributors--were disappointed. But again, the notion of vindication is not a legal one; it's just spin. If Floyd used their money to the best of his ability to get off, it's all he should be legally obligated to do.
Donors could sue Floyd for damages, but it's up to a prosecutor to step in and pursue criminal fraud
Of course, in America anyone can sue anyone for anything. I can sue someone on this forum for disagreeing with me. Seriously.
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