folo

The Sun Herald is providing its Sunday readers the AP’s version of “the key figure” Judge Henry Lackey’s problem after Tim Balducci allegedly approached him for Dickie Scruggs.

OXFORD — For two weeks, Judge Henry Lackey agonized over what to do.

He was pretty sure Tim Balducci had just offered him a bribe and was torn about his next move.

Testimony from Balducci and FBI Special Agent William P. Delaney during a hearing in the federal bribery case against Richard “Dickie” Scruggs and his associates offered the first in-depth look at Lackey’s role in building evidence against the famed plaintiffs attorney.

“Judge Lackey was terribly troubled by the whole incident,” Delaney said. “He was troubled for two reasons. A, he knew what Mr. Balducci was doing was wrong and at the same time he was conflicted because he didn’t want to get his friend in trouble.” …

The judge has not returned multiple messages left by The Associated Press. Testimony last week, however, offered a glimpse of testimony that likely will be offered during a trial, which is set for March 31. …

Though the prosecution’s description of what happened is straightforward — for $40,000, Dickie & co thought they’d bought a judge’s favorable ruling in a lawsuit over $26.5 million in attorneys’ fees — “the picture was not so clear to Lackey last March as he considered contacting the U.S. attorney’s office in Oxford.”

In testimony last Wednesday, Balducci said he first went to Lackey to talk with him about the case involving the Scruggs law firm. He told the judge he thought the case should go to arbitration, something that would likely favor Scruggs.

Lackey felt uncomfortable with the discussion.

“He knew something improper had happened,” Delaney said. “He just didn’t know if it was illegal or not.”

He agreed to help the government find out.

This says — at slight variance with my perception so far — that Judge Lackey “began wearing a wire and recording phone conversations with Balducci from May through September.” NMC and others who were present, was that “wearing a wire” part actually the testimony this week? As I’ve previously understood, the FBI had his chambers and phone camera- and miked-up to a fare-thee-well, but did they actually rig him up with a body-mike too?

Anyhow, reporter Chris Talbott continues,

… even six months after their first conversation, Delaney said Lackey still wasn’t sure there had been a crime. So he finally forced the issue and asked the question. Would Scruggs be willing to pay him to rule in his favor in a dispute over $26.5 million in Hurricane Katrina settlement attorneys fees?

“It took Judge Lackey all summer, from my perspective, to get this thing resolved,” Delaney said. “And to get this thing resolved, he decided he had to ask that question.”

The answer, according to Balducci, was yes. …

In a late March meeting, Zach Scruggs had the bright idea of approaching Lackey, and when John Keker asked Balducci if he’d volunteered to do it, he answered, “Volunteered? I don’t know if I’d put it that way. I was asked to and I agreed to.”

“What I said to the agents is we didn’t talk about giving money to Judge Lackey at that meeting,” Balducci said. “We certainly discussed improperly influencing the judge at that meeting.”

Balducci was startled when Lackey asked for money in a Sept. 18 phone call that was recorded, and went to his office to meet with him three days later to clarify exactly what the judge wanted.

Lackey concocted a story about needing $40,000 to get himself out of a personal bind and asked Balducci if he thought Scruggs would pay the money, the witness testified.

“I said, yes, that I would help him,” Balducci said. “I would get it together and help him.”

Since Balducci’s immediate need then became CYA, he got hold of Sid Backstrom to see whether the Scruggs Law Firm would in fact cover the payment to Lackey; Sid told him to go ahead, Dickie would pay. Now Talbott recounts (consistently misspelling Steve Patterson’s name) Balducci’s testimony that, though he was willing to front the $40K, his ex-state-auditor partner

wanted word from Scruggs. So Paterson, who has also pleaded guilty in the case, contacted P.L. Blake, another Scruggs associate.

“He wanted some direct confirmation because the $40,000 meant a lot to us at the time and he wanted to make sure that if we were going to do this we would get our money back,” Balducci said.

Word came back from Blake “that we would be covered and not to worry about it.”

Only in mid-October did Balducci and Patterson finally talk to Dickie about it themselves, in Dickie’s office. “‘Steve and I were there to meet Dick on an unrelated matter and before we even sat down, he brought it up,’ Balducci said.”

Now according to NMC, Alyssa LydiaLaw, and other foloers in attendance during Balducci’s time on the stand, one of, if not the, major impression they took away from the courtroom was his surprisingly-solid behavior as a witness. No doubt John Keker, Frank Trapp, et al. will do all they can to crack through that at trial, but his first performance certainly seems to have gone much better for him than for them.

Will Henry L. Lackey’s testimony be bulletproof too? I can’t call this The Question of U.S. v. Scruggs, but it may turn into The Question of this trial — should one be required.

By the way: If you’re in Camp Scruggs and your gloom needs a lifting, you might try executive editor Ronnie Agnew’s piece in today’s Clarion-Ledger, whose ending warrants the rare Triple Spew Alert:

As much as the tag of being labeled unfair stings, it serves as a constant reminder of the power of newspapers. While an effective column or editorial should reflect the person or the newspaper editorial board’s opinion, our news stories that appear on section fronts such as Page 1 or Metro-State should always be balanced, void of bias or a point of view.

Sid [Salter] is not being unfair when he disagrees with a position taken by our AG. Nor am I when I offer my thoughts on the location of a civil rights museum.

But our staff-written news stories are sacred and should never tread in that territory. They must be accurate. They must be timely. Above all, they must be fair.

Aw, Ron-nieeeeeeeeeeee.