Minnesota trial court rejects Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea

Sen. Larry Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea has been denied. Here's Judge Charles A. Porter's 27-page order, along with the Metropolitan Airport Commission's one-page press release. I'll have more analysis after reviewing the order.

-----------------

UPDATE (Thu Oct 4 @ 2:40 pm): I've now read the order. Craig is toast.

This is an order written by a judge who is very experienced; who knew that what he was writing is likely to be appealed; and who was therefore being very thorough and very careful to do everything possible to make his ruling bulletproof on appeal. He's almost certainly succeeded.

For example, Judge Porter's order recites (page 2 of the .pdf) that Craig "concedes for the purposes of this motion that the facts contained in the Complaint and in the affidavits and statements of the two Metropolitan Airport Commission ("MAC") Police Department officers are true." That is undoubtedly based on a concession sought and obtained by Judge Porter from Craig's counsel during the oral argument. It's the kind of thing that is incredibly important for purposes of a future appeal — but of course, none of the news media who covered the hearing bothered to mention it. The practical effect is that the prosecution's version of the facts hasn't been challenged at all. And any reviewing appellate court won't even consider any contrary factual arguments.

Similarly, the opinion recites (page 7 of the .pdf file) that Craig's lawyers conceded "that when he accepted the guilty plea, Judge Larson had access to the official court file, which included the Complaint." That's doubtless another concession extracted during the oral argument, and it further bolsters the factual worst-case scenario against Craig, while simultaneously expanding and maximizing the fact pattern from which Judge Larson could have found a basis to conclude that the disorderly conduct statute had indeed been violated. This concession renders moot, in other words, any argument that Craig's lawyers made to the effect that there was an inadequate showing in the written motion to accept his guilty plea, by itself, of facts tending to show a violation of the statute.

Mind you, I'm not faulting Craig's lawyers for making these concessions. As a practical matter, they had to do so if they were to maintain any credibility whatsoever. My point is that by nailing these points down,  first at the hearing and then again in the written order, Judge Porter was adding Kevlar to his ultimate ruling for appellate purposes — anticipating, and then pre-negating, what otherwise might have turned into appellate arguments for Craig.

On two subsidiary points on which he had discretionary rulings to make, Judge Porter actually ruled against the prosecution: First, he refused to reject Craig's motion in its entirety as being untimely; and second, he refused to strike the profoundly silly amicus brief filed by the ACLU. Contrary rulings would have given Craig (or the ACLU) something to complain about in an appeal. But they're deprived now of those arguments, and Judge Porter has also demonstrated that he wasn't just blindly following the prosecution's lead or wholly unreceptive to opposing positions. And yet these subsidiary rulings didn't affect Judge Porter's ultimate ruling in rejecting Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Though timely, Judge Porter concluded that Craig's motion lacked merit; and he spent a page near the end (page 26 of the .pdf) explaining why the ACLU's arguments also lacked merit.

The rest of the opinion just methodically examines and then demolishes every one of Craig's sprawling, sometimes conflicting arguments — often displaying a light sense of irony in the process. For example, after quoting from the petition to enter a guilty plea that prosecutor Renz prepared for Craig's review and signature, Judge Porter examines Craig's argument that his "guilty plea lacked a sufficient factual basis" (page 12 of the .pdf; emphasis mine):

This factual basis contains the requisite date, location, and elements of the offense, but clearly does not describe, in detail, the conduct that substantively supports each element of the offense. The Defendant argues that because the factual basis in the petition lacks detail, he was therefore not aware of the facts  underlying his conduct coinciding with the elements of the offense, or more importantly, that he was not admitting to having engaged in that conduct. This is illogical. The Defendant admits in his post-conviction affidavit that he pled [guilty] in haste in an effort to avoid the public disclosure of the very facts which he now maintains should have been painstakingly detailed in the petition and therefore of record memorializing his admission to specific facts. This Court believes that the Defendant's plea had a more than sufficient factual basis on the face of the petition.

In effect, this is chiding Craig (my paraphrase, not a quote): "Don't be faulting the prosecutor or the court for not rubbing your face in all the sordid details of your crime, Sen. Craig! We were cutting you some slack." But the opinion then proceeds to go through the rest of the conduct in all its detail as revealed in the complaint, lest there be any doubt.

And of course, by the end, there's really not. There never really has been — except in the minds of well-meaning civil libertarians whose zeal to protect gay rights blinded them to the simpler reality that, whether intended as part of a gay cruising ritual or not, an airport traveler's protracted staring into someone else's bathroom stall, and then poking his hand and foot into it to wave at and then rub against that stall's occupant, is just not acceptable conduct in a public restroom.

The opinion also includes an exoneration of both Sgt. Karsnia and prosecutor Renz from any blame or overreaching. It quite appropriately puts all of the responsibility — first for the crime, and then for the guilty plea — directly where it should be, which is to say, directly on Sen. Larry Craig.

What's missing from the opinion? The same damn thing that was missing — inexplicably to me — from Craig's lawyers' written papers: A focused discussion of Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 15.02(3), as made applicable to mail-in pleas by Rule 15.03. In fact, there's no mention of either rule. That may well reflect the absolutely lousy job that Craig's lawyers did of pointing out that these proceedings didn't strictly comply with those rules. But as a result, what I and other legal pundits thought was Craig's very best argument isn't addressed at all. An appellate court would probably conclude, if asked, that Craig has waived that argument by failing to make it more clearly.

And now it simply remains to see whether Sen. Craig plans to become a professional pariah. His chances of successfully appealing this ruling are somewhere below 1% in my opinion; this motion was a farce, but an appeal from this ruling would be nothing but tragic. Will he add "oath-breaker" to his record by continuing to disregard his pledge to resign?

Just quit, Larry. For the sake of your family, if for no one else. Just ... quit.

-----------------

UPDATE (Thu Oct 4 @ 5:10 pm): He says he's staying through the end of his current term (January 2009). As part of the press release, he says: "I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options."

Bring on the Senate hearings. Roll in the klieg lights. It looks as though columnist Dan Popkey was right in predicting that Craig actually wanted to lose this ruling because it would permit him to continue appeals through the end of his term while avoiding an actual trial. So: The Senate should force that trial upon him, in the context of an ethics hearing. Those proceedings are likely to be many times more nasty than a criminal trial anyway. Heat the tar, gather the feathers, and strike up the band, boys, the circus is coming to town.

A lawmaker who is a convicted lawbreaker says the law's rulings don't apply to him, and such a man can't be permitted to remain in office.

-----------------

UPDATE (Fri Oct 5 @ 3:15 pm): James Joyner very ably fisks Craig's "not gunna resign nyah-nyah" press release.

-----------------------

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
5. 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"
6. ACLU files silly brief in support of Craig's plea withdrawal
7. Prosecution moves to strike ACLU amicus brief supporting Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea
8. Of pleas and piñatas: No surprises in prosecution's response to Craig's motion to withdraw guilty plea
9. Craig plans to ditch hearing, but Renz should object to his affidavit as hearsay and force Craig to take the stand
10. Just "one procedural question" for prosecutor Renz as he opposed Sen. Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea
11. Is Craig's strategy "winning by losing," counting on colleagues and constituents to confuse "innocent until proven guilty" with "guilty (pending further appeals)"?