Posted on 09/09/2007 6:03:52 PM PDT by John W
WASHINGTON - Sen. Larry Craig will file court documents Monday asking to withdraw his guilty plea in a sex sting that seems likely to end his career, his attorney said.
Craig, an Idaho Republican, pleaded guilty in August to disorderly conduct following a sting operation in a men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis airport.
He has said he regrets that decision, which he said he made hastily and without talking to an attorney. He said he was under stress and pleaded guilty only to put the matter behind him.
Attorney William Martin said Sunday night that a request to withdraw that plea would be filed Monday. Such requests are rarely granted. Martin would not discuss the argument he planned to make in court.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Of course you can. In fact, if the cop wants to rack up enough convictions/guilty pleas to get promoted out of the toilet to a real job, falsely accusing innocent men is his best bet.
All the cop has to do is to tell the accused that if he pleads guilty, he will have to pay a fine and that the press will not be notified. That is exactly what Karsnia told Craig. Pleading guilty means a $500 fine and can be handled quickly. Pleading not guilty means maybe $5,000 - 10,000+ in legal fees, travel fees, and lost work in order to appear in court. Add to that the increased likelihood with a not guilty plea that your case will "go public." If your friends/family/coworkers learned of your trial, how many of them will assume that you are guilty, no matter what the verdict?
If I were falsely accused by a toilet cop, I would be better off to plead guilty, pay the fine, and hope no one noticed. I am not a public figure. Unlike Larry Craig, the press does not care about me, and probably would not mention my case.
These stings might be tolerable if there could be a time/date stamped video recording of the foot and hand movements under the stall partition. That would limit the cop's ability to extort guilty pleas from innocent suspects. Apparently such recordings have been held to be illegal. So, basically, once a toilet cop accuses someone, he is screwed. The accusation is all the evidence necessary to ruin someone's life. That is just unacceptable. It puts too much power in the hands of someone with too much motive to abuse the power.
I don't know if Craig is innocent or guilty. I do know that these stings present too much opportunity for police abuse, and they should be stopped.
How about prostitution stings? As in a vice cop rents a hotel room, and telephones a suspected call girl to come to his room. The prostitute tries to avoid directly offering her services, but the cop maneuvers her into making an obscene offer. She does so, is handcuffed, and dragged off to the police station. This goes on all the time.
The police video+audio recording of their encounter in the hotel room should clarify whether or not she is really a prostitute. It is legal for the police to record video in a hotel room. Should a cop be able to ruin a woman's life by simply accusing her of prostitution, without recordings or other evidence that support the accusation? Of course not.
If you are asking whether or not I support legalizing prostitution, I suppose that I do.
Welcome to the world as it exists. Usually they just have the word of another cop listening in. These cases generally have one of three results:
After she spends a night in jail, her pimp or madam pays the fine, and they move to another location.
She gives evidence against someone else.
On occasion, the cop is bribed.
Since pleading guilty in court, Craig has insisted that he is not guilty and did nothing wrong. He has done so repeatedly and publicly. If he attempts an entrapment defense, then
and
2) he will have to prove that the idea of putting his hand and foot into the officer's stall and making body contact not only originated with the officer, but that the officer urged him to do so.
The jury would know that the defendant admitted guilt, then denied guilt and is now admitting guilt again. And how is Craig supposed to establish that Karsnia urged him to put his foot and hand into the adjacent stall?
In the bathroom solicitation stings, the men accused need not be guilty of anything. All a man has to do to be accused is to choose a stall next to a toilet cop who is willing to lie to get a conviction.
My personal experiences contribute to my opinion. Gay sexual solicitation may disgust me a bit, but it does not frighten me. I have spent a lot of time around gays, including about 10 years in the San Francisco Bay area, and never had a problem with them. On the other hand, a couple of years ago I listened to a cop tell a deliberate lie in court in order to improve his case against a friend of mine. He looked right at the judge and told what I knew to be a lie, and did so quite convincingly. Anything for a conviction.
Just to keep things very clear, I do not know if the cop made a false accusation against Craig or not. Karsnia may have never made a false accusation in his life. My main point is that the potential problems created by bathroom solicitation stings outweigh their potential benefits.
Uh, no, but the Republicans should certainly maintain "an exclusionary rule" for sickos who seek anonymous perverted sex in public restrooms.
Not in a million years.
Disorderly conduct is a breach of the peace, one of the exclusions specifically enumerated in the section cited.
The rest of your commentary is truly a breath of fresh air.
Thankyou!
This is also true in prostitution stings. But there is no need to charge the innocent since this particular bathroom is apparently world famous as a location for gay cruising. Why frame an innocent when you are waist deep in the guilty?
Men are busted all the time by undercover vice cops dressed provocatively and standing on street corners. Many drug dealers are arrested by undercover officers posing as their counterparts. It's legal. And before you say Karsnia misled Craig about publicity, I should tell you that it's also legal for cops to lie to criminal suspects under interrogation and it's legal for undercover cops to lie about anything to anybody.
Hey, it's been working for Bill Jefferson...
Doing drugs is illegal. Doing homosexual sex is not. Senator Craig was charged with intending to have sex in a public place. That is illegal.
Incidentally, two pieces of news. First Earl Gray, a very successful and aggressive criminal defense attorney, will file today a petition to have the case dismissed.
The second piece of news is (by rumor only) that of the last 40-50 individuals similarly charged only Senator Craig was charged with two criminal actions. Everyone else only had one. Further, by rumor only, a number (30+?)are also going to file to have their case dismissed.
Just thought you would be interested.
Well, you probably are right, but Earl Gray, a St. Paul cracker jack criminal defense attorney, is filing something today to secure either a new trial or to have the case dismissed.
Senator Craig is a human being. He deserves his day in court like anyone else. Because some believe he is a homosexual (not proven IMHO), he has been pilloried and castigated simply on that basis. After all, he was charged with a misdemeanor.
I do feel Rudy Giuliani has had a bum rap on FR primarily because he is prolife and once or twice dressed as a woman in an adolescent party atmosphere. Again, the demostrable hatred for someone who doesn’t agree with the majority of Freepers, speaks poorly for their emotional state and sense of fairness than it reflects on Republican candidate Giuliani. If nothing else those despising Giuliani will have to come to terms with the approximate 30% of Republicans who currently support him in the recent polls.
As far as Fred Thompson, I will vote for him if he wins the primary; I have no personal animosity for him and do not “diss” him. I do feel he should have the same scrutiny as other candidates—especially on health issues. Apparently you and other Fred Thompson supporters see any question or comment as “dissing” when it is the normal course in a contested election.
Your anecdotal experience is not supported by any survey of the matter—at least that I know of.
Re #16 - But when these morons do all these pleas and “waivers” in open court without a lawyer, a judge is often inclined to set it aside.
He waived that right. He deserves nothing... except our scorn.
Sorry, except for the current DWI laws, you can't file a complaint for something that might happen and have somebody arrested for something they might do.
I would just like to see us go back to the old definition of crime before it's criminal to eat a cheeseburger.
Used to, in order to have a crime, you had to have a convergence of evil intent along with damage to people or property.
That may be, but offences such as those under consideration here have been prosecuted continuously since the days of the later Roman Empire.
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