MANIFESTLY UNJUST. I have been mostly sympathetic to Larry Craig until today. It's not easy to be a gay man of his generation and background, I don't think the police should be running entrapment operations in men's rooms, and I think he made a mistake in pleading guilty. I don't even care, as Matt seems to, that Craig is "rather implausibly denying that he ever went in for anonymous gay sex." So what? -- in my world, if something's none of my business, it's o.k. for you to lie about it, in order to protect your privacy. (I mean, it's better for people to be out of the closet than in, but it's their choice, not mine.) But to withdraw his plea on the grounds that it was "manifestly unjust" offends me in the same way as the claim that Scooter Libby's sentence was excessive. There are thousands of people spending as much of their lives in jail as Larry Craig has spent in the Senate because they should not have pleaded guilty. When 95% of felony convictions are decided by plea rather than by the verdict of a judge or jury, it's quite likely that the majority of innocent people behind bars pleaded guilty. Some were illiterate and didn't understand the pleas they were signing. Some had lawyers made no effort to make sure that they understood the consequence of their plea. Some were convinced, perhaps with good reason, that they would never be a able to convince a jury of their innocence and risked a longer term if convicted. (Some examples are here.) And folks like Craig, Arlen Specter, and Scooter Libby have never done one thing to change that system of justice. If they suddenly want to start worrying about "manifestly unjust" guilty pleas, I suggest they start with people who wound up with more than a $500 fine and who lost more than a Senate seat, or with people who didn't merely "neglect" to hire the best lawyers in the country. Because otherwise, this is where my sympathy runs out. -- Mark Schmitt
