In letter forwarding proposed plea, prosecutor Renz repeatedly reminded Craig of his right to counsel and warned that plea would result in "a conviction for Disorderly Conduct appearing on [his] criminal record"

As a result of my telephone conversation with him and my follow-up email request yesterday, Patrick Hogan, the director of public affairs for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission, graciously emailed to me today the two-page letter dated July 20, 2007, under cover of which part-time prosecutor Chris Renz forwarded to Sen. Larry Craig the three-page written motion to enter a guilty plea that Renz had drafted for Sen. Craig's review and possible signature. Sen. Craig signed the motion on August 1st and returned it for filing with the Hennepin County District Clerk. I had noticed a reference to and short quote from Renz' cover letter in an August 28th Associated Press report, but I had not been able to find the full text or an image of the letter anywhere on the internet.

Renz' July 20th cover letter is a precise, entirely fair, and altogether professional piece of work. The AP reporter who only quoted it briefly obviously didn't appreciate its full significance, because in my opinion, it spells the absolute doom of Sen. Craig's efforts to withdraw his guilty plea.

Of critical importance for purposes of the upcoming hearing on September 26th on Sen. Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea: In its very first paragraph, this letter repeatedly reminds Sen. Craig that he still had the right to have the assistance of counsel for the specific purpose of deciding whether or not to enter his plea of guilty to the disorderly conduct charge as part of a proposed plea bargain for the dismissal of the peeping charge (emphasis mine):

Please find enclosed a Petition to Enter Plea of Guilty-Misdemeanor in the above-referenced matter. Please review the document and to the extent that you wish, review the same with legal counsel. If you understand the contents of the Petition and agree thereto, please sign the bottom of pages 1, 2 and 3, as well as sign and date top most signature block on page 3. To the extent that you review the agreement or consult with an attorney regarding the agreement, please enter that attorney's name at paragraph 7 and have them complete the final signature block on the agreement. To the extent that you are not consulting with an attorney or represented by an attorney, please appropriately circle "am not" in paragraph 7.

The letter confirms my previous inference that Renz and Craig had spoken by phone before Renz drafted and sent Craig the proposed motion, and that — far from trying to stampede Craig — Renz had actually arranged for a two-week continuance of Sen. Craig's original July 25th appearance deadline in order that Sen. Craig could have time to consider the plea carefully:

Please return the petition and the [fines and fees] payment so that it is received before August 8, 2007, which is the date to which your arraignment appearance is being continued, as we discussed....

More importantly, however, compare Sen. Craig's attorneys' current spin from his motion (at page 2 of the .pdf file; boldface mine) —

While in this state of intense anxiety, Senator Craig felt compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer [on June 8th after his arrest]; namely that if he were to submit to an interview and plead guilty, then none of the officer's allegations would be made public. Thus, rather than seek legal advice from an attorney to assist him in publicly fighting these charges and potentially protract the issue, Senator Craig's panic drove him to accept a guilty plea, the terms of which offered him what he thought was a private, expeditious resolution of this matter.

— with this sentence from prosecutor Renz' letter that Sen. Craig quite literally had placed into his hands simultaneously with the proposed plea agreement (boldface mine):

Agreeing to the Petition will result in a conviction for Disorderly Conduct appearing on your criminal record.

Point, game, set, match. If you can't hear the fat lady already finishing her warm-ups, it could only be because you've got your fists plugged into your ears and you're singing "LA-LA-LA-I-can't-hear-you" at the top of your lungs. (Or because you're a once-powerful U.S. senator in a serious state of denial.)

I don't know how to say this politely, so I will be blunt: It is inconceivable that when they drafted Sen. Craig's motion, his lawyers did not know of this cover letter. And it is inexplicable to me how any competent lawyer could let his client commit under oath to the notion that he thought his conviction under the guilty plea would not be a matter of public record when he also knew that a letter like this existed. Failing to acknowledge and describe the contents of this letter to the court in their motion borders upon the unethical, and as a tactical decision, it's likely to be about as smart as lighting a barbecue grill aboard the Hindenburg.

Previously, I was guestimating that Sen. Craig had about a 50/50 chance on his motion succeeding. That was based almost entirely on the apparent fact that the motion to enter his guilty plea didn't contain the specific recital required by Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 15.02(3) to establish that "the defendant [knew] there is a right to the assistance of counsel at every stage of the proceedings and that counsel will be appointed for a defendant unable to afford counsel." But this letter almost certainly, and almost conclusively, remedies that omission. And it destroys Sen. Craig's remaining tatters of credibility — and frankly, that of his lawyers, too — by exploding their claim that Sen. Craig had pleaded guilty based on some explicit or implicit understanding that this would all be hushed up if he'd only go along with the guilty plea.

My revised estimation is that Sen. Craig's odds of prevailing on his motion are somewhere below 5%. The only kind of judge who could grant this motion would be the kind who elevates procedural form over all substance, who cares nothing about whether procedural violations have even arguably prejudiced the defendant, and who is also remarkably unoffended by lawyers and litigants who lack fundamental candor. Personally, either as a lawyer or a citizen, I find Sen. Craig's and his lawyers' duplicitous effort to mislead the court considerably more disgusting than anything Sen. Craig is alleged to have done in the men's restroom of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.

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Previous posts on the Craig matter, oldest to most recent:

1. The answer to the "Why was this a crime?" crowd on the Craig matter
2. Craig "reconsidering" resignation; and his chance to withdraw his guilty plea is probably better than Beldar first presumed
3. Has Larry Craig hired the part-time prosecutor who filed the complaint against him?
4. Craig swears that on the date of his arrest, he "decided to seek a guilty plea to whatever charge would be lodged" against him