EHM The Blue Line

I don't know if anyone caught this in the news but they had a small blurb about it in my local paper. I guess Jere Karalahti got busted smuggling nine pounds of amphetamines into Finland. If convicted he could face 6 years in prison. I guess he left the NHL after his 3rd violation of the league's substance abuse policy. It's just a shame to see people have a gift, like being able to play professional hockey, and throw it all away.

I found the article online at...

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/2 ... 3945_x.htm

Jere has always been the favourite drug / alchohol abuser of Finnish sports media. He has a long history of skipping practice and ending on the tabloids for drunken bar brawls. Lately he was removed from his team for a long time: HIFK, out of Helsinki, because of this, and signed by Kärpät.

He is a great defender. Plays hard, but a very skilled player, and plays for the team (if he is at the ice hall to begin with, and not sleeping it off at home). Everyone here has an opinion of Karalahti. I like him, but he needs to focus on paying, not drugs.

Tasku wrote:but he needs to focus on paying

I agree, not paying in time might get you into trouble in this milieu.

You're either an professional athlete or a junkie. You can't be both at the same time if you have something other than emptiness in your brain.

Professional athletes being proved guilty of drug charges or any kind of forbidden products should be banned lifetime. (Unless if it was in the case of a needed medical therapy, but then they should be disqualified...)

The various suspensions actually proposed prove to have absolutely no impact. You always find the same names accused and found guilty, no matter how many times they've been caught in the past nor how long they've been suspended. So there's no use to give them a second chance, as they seem to never grab the opportunity. With a lifetime banishment upon their heads, tempted athletes would think twice before taking any illegal product...

I know i'm a bit harsh about that, but darn! Those guys clearly don't deserve to be called "athletes", no matter how good they naturally are in their sport. I fully disrespect them, as much as they disrespect their sport.

Well, apparantly he was "paying off some old debts", atleast that's what he's told the press here. He's trying to say he was not actually involved in the drug trafficing itself, other than by providing the money for the actual culprits. Basically what he is saying is, he payed off his debt to get out of "it", and the trafficers used that money to finance this operation without his knowledge.

Who knows.

His move from HIFK to Kärpät was described as one of those "I'm turning a new leaf" type of deals in Finland at the start of the season. It was pretty big transfer, cause Karalahti had always been considered a HIFK-man. Him moving from the big bad streets of Helsinki to northern Oulu was supposed to end all this, and get him away from the bad boys he's been involved with in his free time.

Obviously that didn't work...

Karalahti received no offers from Finnish teams, and will now most likely play in Slovakia, Slovan Bratislava, next season, assuming he won't be in jail. Obviously no contract has been signed yet, but Slovan has "rights" for him in Europe.

I wonder what are the actual chances of him getting real jail time. I'm not a lawyer and I don't have the time to wade through all the documents, but based on what I've read it seems to me like there's very little chance of him getting a conviction on the primary charge of trafficking. There's a secondary charge as accessory, and I'm not entirely clear on what would count as accessory in this case.

You can get up to three years in jail even for being an accessory to drug trafficking, and only sentences of two years and under can be given as suspended. And given our courts, they usually are, especially when the convict is a first-time offender. The funny thing is, even though Karalahti has a drug conviction from the 1990s, he is what's called a legal first-timer -- if he has a clear record for the previous three years (which he does), all old sins are forgiven and forgotten. (Yes, our criminal system is hopelessly biased in favor of convicts.)

Yup, I think at most he's going to get a slap on the wrist, spend six months in jail (using the jail gym to practice ) and be back sometime christmas of season 2008-09, as if he was only away on an injury or something.

Sometimes I think our punishments are too lenient, but for some reason on Karalahti's case, I think it might actually work as a wake up call for him, no need to lock him up for a career destroying period of time.

I don't think they'll put him away if he gets anything under 2 years. He'll just get a suspended sentence. However, if he gets 2 years, he will AFAIK have to spend a year in jail; even if you're legally a first-timer, you won't be eligible for parole until you've served half of your sentence.

If he were a rapist or a violent criminal, there would be very little chance of him landing in jail. But for some reason, the same courts which use the lower end of the penalty spectrum in all violent crime, always use the top end when it's about drugs.

Closing summaries in court today. The prosecutor wants to put Karalahti away for 6 years on the trafficking charge, and if that doesn't work, he wants 4.5 years for accessory. Pretty heavy stuff.

Wow I just read an old article about him from like 2000 that I did for my Drug class. He even stated in the article that he couldn't promise he wouldn't go back to drugs.

According to the radio news broadcast, Karalahti was found guilty of being accessory to trafficking. He got a 20 month suspended sentence.

In all likelihood, the verdict will be contested in a higher court.

So he'll be playing next season?

I wonder if the news of Slovan Bratislava buying his contract had any truth to it. Will that be he's team?

I don't know. There's the small matter of this being a possible doping violation; athletes are not supposed to be on the supply side of drug or doping deals either. The Anti-Doping Council may slap him with something like a two-year ban, which would pretty much be it as far as Karalahti's career is concerned (he will turn 33 shortly). A higher court may, of course, overturn the verdict and thus remove the basis for the ban; the bad news is that appeal court waiting lists are huge, so Karalahti might have to wait for well over a year before his case comes up again. And what's more, this thing could go all the way up to the superior court, which would drag the case on for another year or so, and I'm not sure Karalahti the hockey player has that sort of time left.

ETA: According to teletext news, the prosecution wants to send this up to the appeals court. I'm a bit surprised; from what I've seen, this didn't look like a slam dunk case, and the verdict could be totally overturned at the next stage regardless of which party it was that filed the appeal. On the other hand, the 20 month suspended sentence is considerably more lenient than what the prosecutor wanted, so maybe that's the reason.

Urho wrote:On the other hand, the 20 month suspended sentence is considerably more lenient than what the prosecutor wanted, so maybe that's the reason.

He wants his name in the papers, that's why.