From Airport to Railroad

I may have jumped the gun in that last piece, but I'd like to say it wasn't entirely my fault. Senator Craig pleaded guilty to the disorderly conduct charge from June 11, 2007. When someone pleads guilty, you have to figure there's a lot of truth to the charge.

Don't you?

AP Photo/Matt Cilley

I just finished going over the transcript of Senator Craig's arrest interview. The officer in the case, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, advised Craig of his rights, and then asked Craig for his side of the story.

It's an iteresting tale. Nowhere in the transcript does Craig or Karsnia mention the infamous 'shoe tapping' that has been heard so many times in the press. We discover that Craig was standing while in the stall, not sitting. Craig says he spread his legs far apart so as not to have his pants hit the floor while taking a leak. At this point, Karsnia says their feet bumped. Craig is not so sure, but gives a "if you say so" argument. It makes one wonder how far apart the cop's legs were in the neighboring stall.

Further along in the interview, we learn that Craig picked up a piece of toilet paper. Karsnia doesn't confirm or deny this. Karsnia instead says that the Senator put his left hand under the stall. He knew what hand it was, because he saw the Senator's wedding ring.

But hang on. The Senator says that is impossible, because he put his right hand down, not his left. With the Senator standing up in front of the toilet, Karsnia was to his right. Karsnia skips this by asking if the Senator switched his wedding ring to his left hand sometime before the interview. Craig says of course not.

Another interesting bit involves sexual preference. Look at this exchange early on in the interview:

LC: I don't, ah, I am not gay, I don't do these kinds of things and...

DK: It doesn't matter, I don't care about sexual preference or anything like that. Here's your stuff back sir. Um, I don't care about sexual preference.

LC: I know you don't. You're out to enforce the law.

DK: Right.

I found this exchange interesting. Karsnia doesn't care about sexual preferences? Then what is he doing in the toilet waiting for men to proposition him for gay sex? Sexual preference is the most important part of his job, otherwise he would have to arrest everyone in the bathroom. If a man looks him dead in the eye while standing at the sink, is that a "gay pass," or a "straight stare"? According to Karsnia, it doesn't matter. He can arrest you and interpret your actions to mean whatever he wants.

Another interesting exchange:

DK: But there's the, there there's two ways, yes. You can, you can, ah, you can go to court. You can plead guilty.

LC: Yep.

DK: There'll be a fine. You won't have to explain anything. (inaudible) I know.

LC: Right.

DK: And you'll pay a fine, you be (inaudible), done. Or if you want to plead not guilty, ah, and I, I can't make these decisions for you.

LC: No, no. Just tell me where I am (inaudible) I need to make this flight.

DK: Okay. Okay. And then I go to people that are not guilty, then I would have to come to court and end up testifying. So those are the two things, okay. Did I explain that part?

That scares the hell out of me. Police officers and prosecutors, whether real or fictional, have long been using the idea of a plea bargain as a way of making everything all better.

In a nut shell, this is what Karsnia is saying: "If you say you're not guilty, I can take you to jail and you'll have to go to court. Your political career, and life as you know it, will be over. But if you say you're guilty, I'll give a get-out-jail-free card, called a fine, and this will go away."

Further along in the interview, Karsnia has the audacity to say, "I'm not trying to act like I have all kinds of power here."

Yeah, right. Whatever you say, Krupke. The highlight of your day is jailing people that want a quick handjob before a flight to Phoenix. You sit in stalls hoping to get hit on. When women ask what you do for a living, you have to lie in case they think you caught VD off a toilet seat. Not trying to act like you've got all kinds of power? Discovering you've arrested a US Senator must make you feel like you've hit the Mother Lode.

I listened to the audio of the interview. The Senator sounds relatively composed throughout. Karsnia does not. His voice rises in frustration and anger as things don't work out so well: the Senator is willing to pay the fine to avoid the embarrassment, but he's not admitting to anything.

Nor should he have. This is what they had on him? It's a he said/he said case. Where's the crime? There is not one shred of physical evidence in this case, nor is there any audio or videotape. Everything hinges on this cop's story. Even if you buy everything the cop says, it's a hell of stretch to say that the Senator committed a criminal act.

I remember reading a book written by a retired cop in Chicago. He went through the vice squad to pay his dues. For that detail, he had to watch gay men go at it in public bathrooms. He couldn't arrest them until they were virtually in the act of sex, otherwise there was no crime. He wrote some pretty disturbing images in that book, about Vaseline and all kinds of stuff, but it's an important example: to convict someone of a crime, there must actually be a guilty act. The lawyers called it mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reus (guilty act). You need to have both in order to constitute a crime.

To believe that the Senator is guilty of a crime, you must then believe that everything the arresting cop is saying is the truth, and you must assume that Senator Craig was looking for sex. It just doesn't stand up. If you believe it does, then God help you when you're in the hands of an overzealous cop.

Imagine it this way:

You're in a parking lot, waiting for your friend. Your window is down. There's a man parked beside you. You run your hands along the rearview mirror, perhaps clearing dust. A moment later, you run that same hand along the window sill, because you're bored and people do things with their hands when they're bored. Then you touch your ear.

Just then, the man gets out of the neighbouring car, and places you under arrest. He says you've solicited him for gay sex. He says "people do this all the time in parking lots." He goes on to say that if you plead guilty, he'll merely give you a fine and that will be the end of it. If you plead not guilty, he will take you to jail, you'll go to court, your name will be in the papers, you'll likely lose your career, and perhaps your family.

What do you do?

I'll tell you: lawyer, lawyer, lawyer, lawyer. Got that? If the Senator had called a lawyer there would have been no fallout whatsoever. The case would have never gone to court.

As it is, I'm glad the tape was released so I could get a handle on the facts. I now know the cops were running a sting operation in the airport, and that they were hungry for arrests. I also know that the Senator's crime was not lewd behaviour, whether he was after a romp or not.

His crime was stupidity. If there's a cop sitting across from you and the tape recorder's rolling, call a lawyer. No matter what.