Craig Asks Court to Let Him Withdraw His Plea of Guilty

Lawyers for Senator Larry E. Craig filed court papers yesterday asking that he be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in a Minnesota airport sex sting.

In an affidavit, Mr. Craig said that he was “deeply panicked” in the aftermath of his arrest June 11 on suspicion of soliciting a plainclothes officer in a men’s room at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and that, with an Idaho newspaper already investigating his sexuality, he signed a guilty plea on Aug. 1 to try to keep the arrest from being disclosed.

Patrick Hogan, director of public affairs for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which employs both the airport police and the prosecutor in the case, responded to the filing by saying the authorities would vigorously defend their handling of the matter. “We continue to feel we have a solid case where the arrest was made and several weeks later a plea was filed and the fine was paid,” Mr. Hogan said in a telephone interview. “So the case is closed.”

Mr. Craig’s affidavit was filed in Hennepin County District Court, where, Mr. Hogan said, the prosecutor may file a response later this week.

Mr. Craig’s guilty plea was disclosed two weeks ago after an anonymous tip to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Since then, Mr. Craig, Republican of Idaho, has been stripped of his seniority status in committees and become the subject of a Senate ethics complaint by Republican leaders, who have shunned him. He has said he intends to resign Sept. 30 if he cannot win withdrawal of his plea and a successful resolution of the ethics complaint by then.

The standard for withdrawing a guilty plea in Minnesota is correction of “manifest injustice.” Mr. Craig’s lawyers said a guilty plea must be “accurate, voluntary and intelligent.”

The senator, they wrote, was panicked that the arrest would be made public and allow The Idaho Statesman to publish a “baseless article” about his sexuality. The newspaper had conducted a five-month investigation and had interviewed Mr. Craig four weeks before his arrest at the airport.

“While in this state of intense anxiety,” the lawyers wrote, “Senator Craig felt compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer; namely, that if he were to submit to an interview and plead guilty, then none of the officer’s allegations would be made public.”

The officer said Mr. Craig had peeped into his stall, entered the adjacent stall, touched the officer’s foot with his own and made hand signals known to be silent code for soliciting sex in the restroom. Mr. Craig denied all charges in the interview, conducted minutes after the arrest, and said the officer had solicited him and entrapped him.

Mr. Craig was initially charged with interference with privacy, punishable by up to a year in jail, and disorderly conduct, punishable by up to 90 days. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge and drew a 10-day suspended sentence, a $500 fine and one year of probation.

Fred L. Morrison, interim dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, said: “Minnesota law allows a plea to be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances. Those requests are rarely made and, when made, are rarely granted, and if granted, they cause the original criminal complaint to re-emerge. That means both charges.”

Source :www.nytimes.com