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Senator withdraws guilty plea in airport sex sting
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (AP)
Sen. Larry Craig sought to undo his guilty plea in an airport sex sting on Monday, claiming that he admitted to the charge in a panic to avoid triggering a story about his sexuality in his hometown newspaper.
Craig had denied to editors at the Idaho Statesman that he was gay just weeks before his June 11 arrest in the bathroom of the Minneapolis airport. The paper didn’t run a story, but Craig thought his arrest would change that.
Craig’s affidavit said he decided on the day of his arrest to plead guilty to whatever charge was eventually filed against him.
The timing could become important because more than a month and a half passed between Craig’s June 11 arrest and Aug. 1, when he signed a guilty plea to a disorderly conduct charge.
Craig was sentenced to pay $575 in fines and fees and was put on unsupervised probation for a year, with a a 10-day suspended jail sentence. In exchange for Craig’s plea, the prosecutor dropped a gross misdemeanor charge of interference to privacy.
The gross misdemeanor charge was based on the officer’s allegation that Craig peered into his bathroom stall. A conviction on that gross misdemeanor charge could bring a jail sentence of up to a year.
“It happens all the time, a whole lot of people plead guilty to things that they may never have been convicted on if they had gone to trial,” said Paul B. Ahern, a defense attorney.
