Attorneys for disgraced Idaho Sen. Larry Craig have filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea in a restroom sex sting incident that occurred in the Minneapolis airport on June 11.
The central arguments in the 16-page legal brief are that Craig was in a 'sate of intense anxiety' following the arrest and 'felt compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer and plead guilty.' He maintains that he did nothing illegal.
'I'm innocent but if this will make it go away, I'll do it,' is the way attorney Billy Martin described the basis for Craig's initial decision to plead guilty.
The charges involve invasion of privacy and lewd behavior in a restroom stall after Craig allegedly peered into a stall occupied by a plainclothes detective, tapped his foot, and swiped his hand under the stall, all allegedly soliciting sex.
'Even if you accept that he did what he did, it's not a crime,' said Martin. 'My job is to get him back to where he was before his rights were taken away.'
Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the airport said in a statement, 'We do feel we have a strong case, and he's already hade his plea, and it's been accepted by the court. From our standpoint, this is already a done deal...the case is over.'
A hearing has been set for September 26, just four days before the date Craig had set for his resignation from the Senate. It is unclear whether Craig will appear at the hearing, and if he does, whether or not he will testify, or if only procedural matters will be discussed the attorneys.
The New York Times has dug deeper into the airport sting operation, finding that 39 other men were arrested during the three months it was underway.
It wrote, 'Craig's case may have been handled more harshly than some of the others. He alone among the 40 men arrested was charged with both disorderly conduct and interference with privacy,' even though other men had exposed their genitals or crouched on the floor and looked under the stall.
Some persons who worked at the airport have lost their jobs after being arrested in the sting operation.
Most Senate colleagues are loath to speak of Craig, and those that do just wish he would go away. The major exception is moderate Republican Arlen Specter ( Pennsylvania ) , the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor.
He told CNN that Craig deserves his day in court. 'Maybe he'll be convicted, but I doubt it,' Specter said after learning the details of the case. Minnesota law allows a guilty plea to be withdrawn if it is not intelligently made, 'and what Sen. Craig did was by no means intelligent.' Craig is not trained as a lawyer.
Legal observers have speculated as to whether Craig did in fact waive his right to an attorney and whether the facts of the case, as they are now known, justify the charges made. The rarity of motions to withdraw, and the high bar to granting such a petition makes it difficult to predict how the case will turn out.
