Homo Craig Prosecutor Isn’t Havin’ It
posted by on September 25 at 8:30 AM
Allowing Larry Craig to withdraw his guilty plea will lead to a “deluge” of similar cases, warns Christopher Renz, who the A.P. identifies as an “airport prosecutor.” (Airports have prosecutors?)
Craig clearly “had hoped that he could plead guilty and that the plea would not be discovered by the media or public,” Renz wrote. “The defendant chose to plead guilty and consciously took that risk. The defendant’s current pursuit of withdrawal of his guilty plea is reactionary, calculated and political.”Renz warned of a “deluge” of defendants who would ask to withdraw guilty pleas if Craig succeeds. The prosecutor said his office was contacted by a defendant trying to withdraw his plea after Craig announced that he regretted pleading guilty.
The court papers detail several phone calls between Craig and Renz as the case proceeded. On one call on July 17, Renz wrote that he told Craig he should seek an attorney’s advice. Craig never appeared “to have a tone or sense of urgency, panic or overt emotion,” Renz wrote in an affidavit.
Craig, of course, has argued that he pleaded guilt in a white-hot panic. He had been unjustly accused in the past of having sex with men and cruising airport toilets, and the Idaho Statesman had the nerve to ask him about those charges. Worried that his arrest for playing footsie in a Minneapolis toilet would fuel all those baseless gay-and-cruises-toilets rumors, Craig did what any other true-blue, red-blooded, never-been-gay American would do: He pleaded guilty to cruising toilets looking for gay sex.
His attempt to withdraw his guilty plea is not reactionary, it is progressive.
Progressives everywhere should remain supportive of Larry Craig. Our prisons are filled with defendants who pleaded guilty under unfair pressure (mostly on drug charges). I think if he is successful in this he could undo some of the damage he has done in his career if there are indeed a flood of withdrawn guilty pleas. Thousands of prisoners could get another shot at justice.
You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning.
If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you, Mr. Craig?
YES!
Nice try, elenchos. But if Mr. Craig wanted to he could have plead NOT guilty, fought these charges and most likely won. He did not. It is no one else's problem but his that he is in the situation he's in now.
People who are roundly despised are the very ones most in need of justice.
One of the pernicious effects of police relying on guilty pleas to win convictions with dubious cases is that punishment disproportionately lands on those without a lawyer, or who can't afford a protracted legal battle. Or those who fear the shame of merely being accused, even if they are innocent.
Nobody should be convicted of a crime unless the case against them is strong, and the case against Craig is weak. If a defendant accused of a capital crime had tried to plead guilty without consulting an attorney, especially with such a flimsy case, the judge would have refused to allow them to enter the plea.
Why should a lower standard of justice apply merely because Craig has no friends on the right because he is gay, and no friends on the left because he is a hypocrite? Why should the police be allowed to continue to win this sort of easy conviction just because the accused ignorant or afraid?
Well, I'd say lesson learned then. I bet he doesn't plead guilty the next time he's busted looking for action in a public restroom.
How is that going to lead to a deluge of cases? Many (probably most) people who plead guilty do so because there's a shitload of evidence against them and they're better off with a deal or because they can't afford a decent attorney. How will these situations change if Craig gets to change his plea? The guilty as sin convict will still be guilty as sin. The poor, pathetic convict will still be poor and pathetic.
The prosecutor obviously believes his jails could overwhelm the courts with convicts who were bluffed into pleading guilty on weak evidence. That belief is based on firsthand knowledge of how these plea deals are made, and of how lazy police are.
So if the prosecutor knows anything about his own system, then there is an urgent need to reexamine these cases. And if he's wrong, then there will not be a deluge of withdrawn pleas, and the system will have been tested and proven sound. Either way, Larry Craig deserves justice.
My money says cops are lazy and prosecutors are better at bluffing than winning in court.
Craig pled guilty to a lesser charge. I don't understand why he'd want to go to trial for attempting anonymous restroom sex. I'd love to watch the trial, especially the expert witness testimony. Hopefully they'll show some screen shots from cruisingforsex.com
@7 all that info is out already. why not address it in court?
he plead out to save face. face was not saved when (weeks later) the story finally broke.
any number of married non-politician men caught in a similar situation would probably take the deal as opposed to going to trial even if they thought they would not be convicted.
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