Republican Senator pleads guilty to lewd conduct in a men's room

[Felix_Nietzsche]

[ QUOTE ]
Innocent men with their entire public careers to lose probably don't plead guilty without any consultation from an attorney. What possible reason would he plead guilty if he was innocent?

[/ QUOTE ]
Innocent people do go to jail. Inncocent people do accept plea deals. "Mad Dog" prosecutors are as common as fleas on a pig....... Spending 12 months in jail is sometimes easier than spending $40K in legal bills. I personally know a guy that spent 18 months in federal min security prison because he took a $5/hr + commission telemarketing job. The people he worked for were crooks. The feds told him to turn state' witness or be prosecuted. He had no knowledge to give them and he listen to his court appointed attourney and pleaded guilty (he was a coward but lots of people are cowards). If Craig fighted the charges.....he would have spent months in the 24-hour news cycle. He knew this. He thought he could avoid this.... He was wrong.....

[ QUOTE ]
And let's say he was innocent -- then that suggests this Senator has horrendous judgment when it comes to important decisions, and he has incredibly strange behavior in public restrooms

[/ QUOTE ]
You have not read the police report. The only strange piece of behavior was their feet touched. I've sat in bathroom stalls before. The ONLY way someone could touch my feet was if the other person's feet was purposefully moved all-the-way to the edge of the stall. My point being, unless this cop was a 7 foot tall basketball player, this cop moved his feet to the extreme edge of the stall. So if their feet touched, then the senator has plausible deniability that it was an accident. Also if the cop moved his feet to the extreme end of the stall.....he was obviously trying to entice an encounter. Craig never made a verbal overture for sex.....if he had, the cops would have had a strong case. Since he did not....the cops case was extremely flawed.

Like I said. I don't like Craig.. [censored] him...

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
the cops case was extremely flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

So flawed, in fact, Craig pled guilty almost a full two months after the incident. Again, this isn't even a 'heat-of-the-moment, Detective Stabler just pushed you up against the wall and coerced a false confession' guilty plea. It's a 'Craig had two months to think it over, obtain counsel if necessary, mount a defense or otherwise weigh his options, and still pled guilty' type of guilty plea.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
.... Spending 12 months in jail is sometimes easier than spending $40K in legal bills. ....

[/ QUOTE ]


There's a lot of truth IMO to the fact that copping to a lesser charge is often influenced by the expense of mounting a defense. I have my doubts in the Craig case but maybe. Hadn't considered that.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
.... Spending 12 months in jail is sometimes easier than spending $40K in legal bills. ....

[/ QUOTE ]


There's a lot of truth IMO to the fact that copping to a lesser charge is often influenced by the expense of mounting a defense. I have my doubts in the Craig case but maybe. Hadn't considered that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some lawyer looking for some publicity probably would have done the case pro bono anyway; or similarly, some special interest group, or his political allies, would probably have been more than happy to help him raise money for his legal fees or provide counsel if he was actually innocent and decided to fight the charges.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

[ QUOTE ]
Some lawyer looking for some publicity probably would have done the case pro bono anyway; or similarly, some special interest group, or his political allies,

[/ QUOTE ]
Uh......yeah. Defense attorneys spend entire careers trying to get high profile cases so they can do it pro bono. You obviously speak with great experience on this subject. Scooter Libby's large legal bill is a scam since his lawyers did the case pro bono.....yes?

[mjkidd]

Is it really illegal for me to go up to some dude in the bathroom and ask him if he wants to [censored] me in the ass? What the hell is this country coming to?

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Is it really illegal for me to go up to some dude in the bathroom and ask him if he wants to [censored] me in the ass? What the hell is this country coming to?

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT, if this would have happened to a Democrat then I just wonder what they, the Democrats, would be saying. Let's say that Craig is gay and doesn't want to come out of the closet. Should he be ridiculed and derided for this? I've been listening Air America and they've been basically doing just that. They're not deriding him for just hypocrisy, they're deriding him for not coming out of the closet. To me it looks alot like hate speech but could be convinced otherwise.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Is it really illegal for me to go up to some dude in the bathroom and ask him if he wants to [censored] me in the ass? What the hell is this country coming to?

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT, if this would have happened to a Democrat then I just wonder what they, the Democrats, would be saying. Let's say that Craig is gay and doesn't want to come out of the closet. Should he be ridiculed and derided for this? I've been listening Air America and they've been basically doing just that. They're not deriding him for just hypocrisy, they're deriding him for not coming out of the closet. To me it looks alot like hate speech but could be convinced otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]

They'd be saying "Hooray for gays, we love our gays" because they haven't built their party around hating homosexuals?

Just a thought.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Some lawyer looking for some publicity probably would have done the case pro bono anyway; or similarly, some special interest group, or his political allies,

[/ QUOTE ]
Uh......yeah. Defense attouneys spend entire careers trying to get high profile cases so they can do it pro bono. You obviously speak with great experience on this subject. Scooter Libby's large legal bill is a scam since his lawyers did the case pro bono.....yes?

[/ QUOTE ]

If the claim is that Craig pled because he couldn't afford or didn't want to pay for the legal fees associated with defending himself, then yes, I of course call [censored].

Speaking of Libby:

Libby Legal Defense Trust

"The Libby Legal Defense Trust was formed to help defray the legal defense costs for Lewis "Scooter" Libby and his family against the recent legal charges brought against him."

But yeah, the poor Craig family, likely living in squalor somewhere in downtown DC, obviously couldn't get access to skilled and experienced legal counsel to fight these trumped up charges. And we all know how high-profile cases are just anathema to your typical defense attorney. Couple all this with the law enforcement's proclivity for targeting poor, defenseless, down-trodden United States Senators with their lawless chicanery -- Senator Craig just never had a chance!

In the TWO months between his arrest and his guilty plea, it never occurred to the destitute Craig family that he could go the Libby route and start a legal defense fund in order to fight unjust charges that, if brought to public light, would severely damage his career.

The Craig family, forced to choose between feeding their starving children and hiring a defense lawyer, while simultaneously remaining oblivious to the obvious mechanisms of legal defense funding available to them, decided the Senator should just plead guilty. A good lawyer (that could have conceivably saved his career and saved him from public disgrace) could cost thousands of dollars, and that's obviously a burden no impoverished US Senator could bear. Hey, it won't be summer forever, and his kids need winter coats to survive the cold, right?

Yeah, Sen. Craig is innocent, and it's the prohibitive legal fees and aggressive Idaho Statesmen reporting that motivated, NAY forced him to plead guilty...a full two months after the incident.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
.... Spending 12 months in jail is sometimes easier than spending $40K in legal bills. ....

[/ QUOTE ]


There's a lot of truth IMO to the fact that copping to a lesser charge is often influenced by the expense of mounting a defense. I have my doubts in the Craig case but maybe. Hadn't considered that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some lawyer looking for some publicity probably would have done the case pro bono anyway; or similarly, some special interest group, or his political allies, would probably have been more than happy to help him raise money for his legal fees or provide counsel if he was actually innocent and decided to fight the charges.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's what I wrote to which you responded:

[ QUOTE ]
There's a lot of truth IMO to the fact that copping to a lesser charge is often influenced by the expense of mounting a defense. I have my doubts in the Craig case but maybe. Hadn't considered that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which means cost of a lawyer is probably not the reason Craig copped to the charge he did. Surprised you missed what I wrote, just thought I'd add the bolding to make it more readable and clear to you.