Craig: ‘Intense Anxiety’ Prompted Plea
Sen. Larry Craig has filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in connection with an airport sex sting, saying he acted in response to an officer’s assertion that the allegations would remain secret.
Papers filed with a Hennepin County, Minn., court say Craig was in a “state of intense anxiety” over possible publicity when he accepted an officer’s suggestion to plead guilty to the charge, the Associated Press reports. Craig didn’t consult a lawyer, instead feeling “compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer”—the assertion that the officer’s allegations about the incident would not be made public, the motion (PDF) says.
The evidence was insufficient to support the plea, according to the filing, and the plea was not “knowingly and understandingly made.” The motion also says Craig made his plea by mail and a judge did not question him about it.
“Had an appropriate judicial inquiry occurred in this case, the court would have quickly concluded that, faced with the pressure of an aggressive interrogation and the consequences of public embarrassment, Senator Craig panicked and chose to plead to a crime he did not commit,” the motion says.
The New York Times reports that Craig was one of 40 men arrested in the restroom sting during a three-month period this summer and he may have been treated more harshly than the others.
Craig was the only person charged with both disorderly conduct and interference with privacy; other defendants faced just one or the other charge. Still others were charged with indecent exposure or loitering. An airport spokesman told the Times that Craig was originally charged with two crimes because he had looked into the police officer’s restroom stall and had used foot tapping and hand motions to indicate an interest in sex.
