State Sen. Dale Righter (R), a former prosecutor, assailed Madigan’s filing as not only weak and useless, but also possibly counterproductive. It could be used later to prove that Blagojevich is unfit to stand trial.

“If the allegations in the federal complaint are true,” said Righter, “that would indicate that the governor is a crook, not that he’s crazy…[Madigan’s pleading] was a dangerous overreach from this perspective: By making the argument that the governor is unable to distinguish between right and wrong, she’s also making the argument that the governor, at some point, is unfit to stand trial. Good defense attorneys, if they really can bring into question their client’s ability to distinguish between right and wrong…will make the case that their client is unfit to stand trial.”

“If I were the attorney general, I would be concerned now that the governor’s attorney, if he looks at that path at all, one of the people he’s going to have on his list to talk to about that is the attorney general. She has filed pleadings with the Illinois Supreme Court saying, yeah, he’s unfit. I don’t think that’s what she intended, but that’s the danger of making such an extraordinary claim, especially when you don’t have any evidence to back it up.”

Righter also repeated what Radogno had suggested, that Madigan may have done this in order to avoid criticism for doing nothing.