Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
D.C.
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Mass.
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
N.Carolina
N.Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
S.Carolina
S.Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
W.Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Law Firm Website Design Companies : The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly


If Minnesota judge Charles Porter Jr. does the expected, he will refuse to let Senator Larry Craig take back his guilty plea for his now notorious men's room encounter with an undercover cop.

At that point, Porter will have saved Craig from yet another of the senator's bizarre errors in judgment.

Compounding his previous errors, the Idaho Republican this week sent lawyers to persuade Porter to undo his guilty plea and let him go to trial. As Craig says, he wants ``to clear my name.''

He probably doesn't mean he wants to clear his name of the taint of a disorderly conduct conviction.

He means, of course, he wants to clear it of any link to homosexuality. He will have a hard time doing that because technically, officially, he isn't charged with homosexuality. Technically, officially, it is no longer a crime in America to be gay. The U.S. Supreme Court said so ages ago, in 2003.

No, Craig was instead charged with being disorderly because the officer in the next stall took his peculiar hand and foot movements as a sexual come-on.

A bogus charge? You betcha, as they say here in Minnesota. There is simply nothing criminal about toe-tapping, shoe-to-shoe contact or someone putting his hand beneath a bathroom stall divider, as one of his lawyers, Billy Martin, told the judge at this week's hearing.

``None of those facts, in and of themselves, constitute a crime,'' Martin told Porter. It would be a ``manifest injustice'' to let the conviction stand, he argued.

Guilty Plea

He's right. But the law makes it almost impossible to set aside a guilty plea. And Craig had weeks to decide whether to admit guilt before he mailed in his plea, as the prosecution noted.

Since then, he has had weeks to think what might happen in the improbable event that he gets a trial.

Police would testify that closeted gay men (like Craig?) pose a menace when they troll public bathrooms for sex.

They might say that this particular bathroom at this particular airport had become famous on the Internet as a rendezvous point for men seeking men.

As for Craig's actual conduct, remember that he exposed no part of his body that is normally covered, nor did he fondle or grope or grab anyone.

But the prosecutor in the case, Christopher Renz, can make even the running of a hand beneath a stall divider sound like soft-core porn.

Stroking the Divider

``Repeated stroking of the stall divider,'' Renz called it at this week's hearing, ``each stroke showing more of his left hand.''

Then there would be the chance that the judge might let the prosecution put on the stand the man who told the Idaho Statesman he had sex with Craig in the men's room of Union Station in Washington.

Does Craig really want that?

In his defense, Craig might raise his ``wide stance'' to explain away the apparent attempt at footsie. And it would be ridiculed, as it has been already, mercilessly.

The best Craig could get is a jury focused only on the facts of what he did, a jury that labors to see whether that conduct met the legal elements of disorderly conduct.

Throw in a little reasonable doubt, and Craig just might get acquitted.

So what? He would stand acquitted of disorderly conduct, which no one cares about anyway, aside from legal wonks like me. There would be no verdict on whether he committed homosexual conduct, which is all his Grand Old Party and his ``family values'' constituents care about.

Muddying His Name

But there would have been lots of testimony that would do more to muddy his name than clear it.

Fortunately for Craig, Porter seemed to be buying none of Martin's argument, except for when he said the law makes it ``next to impossible'' to set aside a guilty plea.

Fortunately for Craig, the judge argued with Martin on matters large and small.

When Martin said his client wanted to plead innocent, Porter interrupted to chide him on a point that was clearly meant to be more rhetorical than legal. There is no such plea in Minnesota, the judge told Porter.

Here, as elsewhere, you are either guilty or not guilty, he said.

It's an obvious point, and yet it is one that Craig seems to have missed. There is no way he will be declared innocent, even if he wins a trial and is found not guilty.


Legal News | Breaking News | Terms & Conditions | Privacy

ⓒ Breaking Legal News. All Rights Reserved.

The content contained on the web site has been prepared by BLN as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. Affordable law firm web design company
   More Legal News
   Legal Spotlight
   Exclusive Commentaries
   Attorney & Blog - Blog Watch
   Law Firm News  1  2  3  4  5  6 
   Lawyer & Law Firm Links
Car Accident Lawyers
Sunnyvale, CA Personal Injury Attorney
www.esrajunglaw.com
Family Law in East Greenwich, RI
Divorce Lawyer, Erica S. Janton
www.jantonfamilylaw.com
Oregon DUI Law Attorney
Eugene DUI Lawyer. Criminal Defense Law
www.mjmlawoffice.com
New York Surrogacy Lawyers
New York Adoption Lawyers
Adoption Pre-Certification
www.lawrsm.com
Chicago, Naperville IL Workers' Compensation Lawyers
Chicago Workplace Injury Attorneys
www.krol-law.com
Raleigh, NC Business Lawyer
www.rothlawgroup.com
Lorain Elyria Divorce Lawyer
www.loraindivorceattorney.com
Connecticut Special Education Lawyer
www.fortelawgroup.com
Immigration Attorney in Los Angeles, California
Family Immigration Attorney
www.brianohlaw.com/english
   More Legal News  1  2  3  4  5  6
   Legal News Links
  Click The Law
  Daily Bar News
  The Legal Report
  Legal News Post
  Crisis Legal News
  Legal News Journal
  Korean Web Agency
  Law Firm Directory