Out in California this week, Barry Bonds continues his relentless stalking of Henry Aaron’s career home-run record, and Lancaster County, Pa., cyclist Floyd Landis continues his attempt merely to salvage his career.

The fates of the two men are unrelated aside from their current proximity, but their stories are intertwined because both have been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs to cheat at their chosen professions.

Bonds has been found largely guilty in the nonbinding court of public opinion but has so far been able to lean away from anything more substantial, as if the mass of circumstantial evidence were just one more chin-high fastball to avoid deftly.

Landis, the winner of the 2006 Tour de France, tested positive for high testosterone levels after a remarkable Stage 17 comeback in that race, and other samples were later found to contain synthetic testosterone.

Bonds and Landis operate in very different worlds. Baseball’s drug-testing strictures were impossibly lax when inflated sluggers shredded the game’s most hallowed records. The testing for international sports is much more stringent, but takes place in an environment in which the hunt for witches encourages the testers to cut a few corners.

It is the difference between innocent-until-proven-guilty and the exact opposite.

The bottom line is that, from the standpoint of reasonable doubt, neither Bonds nor Landis can be declared guilty. That is a uniquely American standard, one that we would all want applied to ourselves in a similar situation. You’ve got to catch the guy, and you’ve got to catch him cold.

Landis was caught by the Laboratoire National de Depistage du Dopage in Chbtenay-Malabry, a facility in a suburb just southwest of Paris. The methods and procedures at the lab are sloppy, and the results it issues are increasingly suspect. Recently, the International Tennis Federation announced that drug tests from the French Open – held in Paris, by the way – would be shipped to a lab in Montreal rather than shuttled to Chbtenay-Malabry. The ITF said it was an economic decision, but what was it going to say?

The French lab has spit out approximately three times as many positive results as other labs sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Those results, particularly the ones involving notable American cyclists, are also quickly leaked to L’Equipe, the French sports newspaper, which happens to be owned by the company that owns the Tour de France. So it’s quite a racket.

Does any of this mean Floyd Landis is innocent, set up by nefarious Frenchmen who twirl their moustaches and laugh heartily at his plight? No, it does not. He may well be guilty. It means only that you can’t trust the evidence.

This would be fine for Landis if his case was being heard in a court of law that adhered to innocent-until and the overriding escape hatch of reasonable doubt. Instead, his arbitration, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, will be judged by a three-man panel, and was probably decided before it began.

Each side in the case picks one arbitrator, and the third is supposed to be mutually agreed upon. That didn’t happen, and the compromise member of the panel is someone who almost always rules against athletes. The decision is cooked, in other words, and Landis is done.