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LOU CHIBBARO J
Friday, September 14, 2007
Prosecutors in Minnesota say they will argue in court on Sept. 26 that U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican, should not be allowed to rescind his earlier decision to plead guilty to disorderly conduct following an accusation that he solicited sex in an airport bathroom.
Craig’s attorneys filed a motion in a Hennepin County, Minn., court Monday that claims Craig was in a “state of fear” over possible publicity surrounding his arrest. The motion states that Craig’s guilty plea “was not knowingly and understandingly made.”
The Sept. 26 court hearing is to be held before Judge Charles Porter, who is not the same judge who accepted Craig’s written guilty plea, which Craig signed on Aug. 1. Craig’s lawyers have said Judge Gary Larson erred in accepting the plea because the evidence, according to the lawyers, shows that Craig did not commit a crime.
Republican leaders in Washington and Idaho this week continued to call for Craig to resign from the Senate. Craig, meanwhile, remained in seclusion in Idaho in the early part of the week and did not participate in Senate discussion on the Iraq war.
Prosecutors and police assigned to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where Craig was arrested June 11, said through spokespersons that they dispute Craig’s rationale for seeking to withdraw his guilty plea. They said the guilty plea and Craig’s payment of a fine of $575 amounts to a “final judgment” in the case.
An undercover police officer who arrested Craig said the senator peeped into a bathroom stall where the officer was sitting, entered an adjacent stall and tapped his foot and moved his hand along the bottom of the partition separating the stall — all part of a ritual used to solicit sex in bathrooms, according to the officer.
In his police report, the officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, said he tapped his foot in response to Craig’s foot tapping.
Craig has denied he is gay and strongly disputes the officer’s claim that he was soliciting the officer for sex.
Most gay advocacy groups have pointed to Craig’s statements and voting record against gay rights during his political career and have steered clear of taking a position on whether Craig committed a crime by allegedly soliciting sex in a public bathroom.
But the Michigan-based Triangle Foundation, a gay rights group that specializes in monitoring anti-gay violence and police conduct toward gays, says gay people and anyone else concerned about equal treatment under the law should speak out in Craig’s defense.
“Larry Craig did not break the law, period, because nothing he did was lewd,” said Sean Kosofsky, the Triangle Foundation’s director of policy. “If the officer lied about whether a crime was committed, he is the one who should be prosecuted.”
Kosofsky acknowledges that it may appear unusual that a longtime gay activist whose organization lobbies for gay civil rights legislation is going to bat for a politician who has consistently voted against gay rights.
“I’m about consistency and I’m about integrity,” Kosofsky said. “Craig did not do anything illegal. And the big issue is we have been fighting police entrapment for 50 years and it’s still happening.”
Legal experts said Craig’s attorneys have an uphill fight to convince the judge that Craig’s guilty plea should be overturned. But even if they succeed in doing that, they must then defend Craig in a trial that will turn on whether a judge or jury believes Craig or the arresting officer.
Gay rights attorneys defending clients and public sex arrests have said judge and juries almost always take the word of the police, especially in cases where the defendant allegedly has solicited “homosexual” sex in a public place.
In Craig’s case, his attorneys’ best chance of succeeding in obtaining an acquittal for Craig is if they can show that no law was broken, even if Craig did everything the arresting officer said he did, said Susan Sommer, senior counsel for the New York-based gay litigation group Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund.
In their legal brief filed in Minnesota, Craig’s attorneys argued that Craig mistakenly pleaded guilty because he feared a trial would fuel an investigation into his private life by his home state newspaper, the Idaho Statesman.
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