The Out-Lawyer's Blog

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2

I’m sure you are being inundated with advice right now.  But you need to know how your airport bathroom incident looks to the experts, because that is the best leading indicator of public opinion.

When you were arrested by an undercover police officer for sexual misconduct in a Minneapolis Airport restroom in June of this year and given until August to get the advice of counsel, no one – and I mean no one – will now believe that you let two months slip by without talking to a lawyer. 

Is it really true, as you claimed yesterday, that you pleaded guilty to ‘disorderly conduct”, a misdemeanor not registerable as a sexual offense in Minnesota, without benefit of counsel? 

Yes? Then – if you were innocent – your very next step is to immediately return to the court -- armed with the very best attorneys money can buy -- get your plea set aside and set the matter for a full trial.

I won’t make matters worse by using this space to repeat the description of your conduct as it was described in the police report.  Let’s just say that it was an account of suspicious behavior, sexually ambiguous, but arguably innocent, provided you had stepped forward to defend yourself. 

As a public defender, I’ve handled or reviewed more of these cases than I can count.  Given that there was no actual sexual contact and no prior criminal record, it was a perfectly reasonable disposition of your case – from the perspective of the prosecutor and court – to allow a plea to a non-registerable misdemeanor. And it was a perfectly reasonable step for a guilty person to “take the deal and run”.   But, in my multi-decades experience, a well healed defendant who was innocent of these charges would have fought them tooth and nail. 

And, if you are in fact innocent, Senator, you would have had little difficulty in persuading a jury of that.  The trial would have been inconvenient and embarrassing, but let’s get real here: Winning the case was your only career-friendly option.

Put simply: This was a case that any reasonably articulate innocent defendant with reasonably articulate counsel could have beat at trial, hands down (so to speak).

Sorry, Senator, but that’s just how it looks to the experts.  

I’m sorry this advice is so late.  It reminds me of the story of the client who – having jumped from a 40 story building – sailed past his lawyer’s open window on the way down.  “What do I do now!” he shouted. 

The lawyers reply? “You shouldn’t have jumped!”