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Friday, November 22, 2013

Pena 'Cleared' Of Charges; Pennsylvania Arrests

Today the New York Supreme Court  has affirmed its decision as I expected, indicating the NYGC may not prosecute trainer Lou Pena on the charges they brought against him due to their violating his constitutional rights. 

This is the correct ruling.  Forget about the way they managed to bring charges about him.  You can not have a 30 day period to respond to an appeal and hold someone more than a year in limbo because for some reason you decide not to release your recommendation.

Does racing win in this case?  Time will tell.  What was the winner today are the civil rights of anyone the state decides to 'freeze out' and violate their own rules.


In the meanwhile, it is reported that the FBI is investigating possible race fixing, at least at Penn National but perhaps other tracks in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  At this time there is no evidence it involves harness racing, but race fixing of any type hurts all of racing.  We will see what happens here.

Update:  Arrests have already been made in this investigation but the investigation is on-going.   As PTP indicated, not only do we have to deal with high takeouts, we have to worry about falsified information.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pacingguy:

It's clear most, if not all, racing commissions can't or won't deal with cheating in a way that solves the problem.

The federal government has finally stepped in to arrest people accused of not playing by the rules. The alleged crimes are the same as those that draw fines and suspensions from racing commissions.

I've long wondered why racing commissions treated crimes as administrative rule breaking. It's good to know someone outside of racing has acted.

Unknown said...

If the public only knew about the drugs in these majestic animals, and the tragic lack of responsibility of our "government officials. These are twisted times. Lock up marijuana smokers, spend billions on law enforcement so they have jobs, health insurance, and retirement checks. Spend more money to protect the drug companies, vets, trainers. Not to mention the phoney Pena suspension. The industry admits to allowing any type of drug to be injected into these horses. Just follow the "time line" of their "rules".
Pena got greedy, and didn't share his spoils. So, they took past samples off their inventory shelves, then test to the millionth for a metabolite. Then treat Pena like a guy that was caught with a joint, and put him away.
You want an eye opener. Go to the results of Yonkers 7th race on November 29, 2013. Look at the payoffs, then ask why the exacta only paid $85.00. I said enough.