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A Minnesota appeals court has denied Sen. Larry Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. The Idaho Republican, who is retiring from the Senate, had argued in September that his case was not fully investigated. Craig was charged in August 2007 with disorderly conduct for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in the bathroom. He pleaded guilty at the time but recanted and proclaimed his innocence after news broke of the arrest. Craig later attempted to persuade a district court to allow him to withdraw the plea, but the district court refused, and Craig took the case to the Minnesota State Court of Appeals.The appeals court on Tuesday simply upheld the district court’s ruling. “Appellant has not shown that the district court abused its discretion in denying his petition to withdraw his guilty plea,” Judge Edward Toussaint Jr. stated in the 10-page ruling. Craig’s attorney, William Martin, told the three-judge panel in September that a district judge failed to sign Craig's plea petition, and that there is "no factual basis" for such a plea. “The backbone of the judicial system is that a person should not be entitled to go into a courtroom and plead guilty if there are not sufficient facts to support that plea," Martin said at the time. Martin noted, for instance, that the charge against Craig cites that he had motioned to the arresting officer with his fingers through the wall separating the two bathroom stalls. He described that as merely "conduct that is consistent with someone that is anxious to go to the bathroom." Craig was rebuked by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics in February for dishonoring the chamber. He did not seek reelection, and the seat was won last month by Idaho Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, also a Republican.
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