LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – LawFuel’s lead story reports that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig moved to undo his guilty plea to a sex-related charge by filing a motion Monday saying that he was in a “state of fear” and worried about “unnecessary publicity” this summer when he signed the plea.
The motion, filed in court Monday in Hennepin County, Minn., seeks to withdraw the Idaho senator’s plea to disorderly conduct, a charge that arose from accusations he tried to arrange for sex with an undercover police officer in the bathroom of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.
In the document, Craig maintained his innocence and said his plea should be withdrawn because when he signed it Aug. 1 “it was not knowingly and understandingly made.”
Rather than seeking advice from a lawyer who would “assist him in publicly fighting these charges,” Craig said in Monday’s court motion that “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.”
“I made the decision on that date to seek a guilty plea to whatever charge would be lodged against me,” Craig said in an affidavit filed with the motion.
