I thought the point of the post was:

Whether any of the “targets” have any self-awareness of the danger they are in?

And secondly, when along the timeline to there actions reflect knowledge of the government’s evidence?

And thirdly, did Langston and Paterson have to get hit on the head with a rubber mallet to have some self realization? If so when?

I’ve known Joey for a long time and his arrogance is 100 fold what it was years ago (and I ain’t sayin he wasn’t arrogant before).

I’ve also known other people who have “made it big” and all of the sudden they think whatever they say or do is untouchable. They make bold face lies and believe everyone who hears will believe just because they say so.

Very sad, indeed.

How bad does someone have to hate law enforcement, to be upset that they investigated and charged someone with this type of judicial corruption? I don’t know, but finding people like that, and getting them on his jury, may be Scruggs’ only hope to avoid a conviction.

My view continues to be that for an attorney, there is nothing worse you can do than to corrupt the very system that was set up to give people a forum to settle their disagrements in a fair, honest, and civilized fashion. One of the things that we take for granted in this country, that is not that common when you look at the whole world.

It’s good for a poster to come along every so often to remind me that not everyone sees it the same way.

It’s much more than a stain on Mississippi jurisprudence: it’s an indictment of our state’s failure to regulate our legal, prosecutorial, and judicial systems. The Mississippi Bar can’t plead that it was just the piano player and didn’t know what was going on upstairs. We don’t have aggressive investigatory newspaper operations constantly bird-dogging these stories. And we sure don’t have lawmakers minding the shop. As always, we have to look to the federal gummint to clean our Augean Stables.

And, there is this: Before the government can take away the liberty of a person it should be required to do so honestly, decently, fairly.

The end does not justify unlawful means. We fought WW II over this fundamental principle — We are a nation of laws not state power.

The No. 9 post above, containing the link to a brief history of Mississippi earwigging, makes the most believable case yet as to how all this might have occurred. It is pretty consistent with what my thoughts have been along.

USA v. SCRUGGS arose, in my opinion, almost accidentally. The federal DoJ had been struggling over the past 6 years or so to bust up the litigation abuses exemplified by the Phen-Fen cases. Every time a rock is turned over down there, something slithers from beneath it, and something slithered in the direction of Ed Peters, methinks, and that something eventually slithered off toward Judge DeLaughter and others.

No investigation of Mississippi trial lawyers would be complete without an effort to implicate Dick Scruggs as a usual suspect. But, I believe, the feds were focusing their efforts in the Southern District and WILSON v. SCRUGGS. They planned on getting enough evidence from the shenanigans in WILSON to bring down a cartload of attorneys and possibly a judge or two.

No one planned on Tim Balducci’s stumbling onto center stage in Northern Mississippi. He was never a player and had no role in the Southern District investigations.

But Tim stumbled on nevertheless, substantially as is suggested in the link in Post 9 above, in my opinion. Tim was trying to make himself and Patterson a force majeure in the Northern Mississippi law and influence peddling community. Tim was offering “of counsel” badges to various people whose names would, in Tim’s view, look good on his letterhead: former Gov. Bill Allain and former Chancellor Norman Gillespie are two that names that come to mind first.

In my opinion, Balducci never had a role in JONES FUNDERBURG v. SCRUGGS until he created one for himself. He felt he could ingratiate himself with Dick Scruggs et al. by using his special closeness to Henry Lackey to turn a favor for Scruggs. Lackey had already been earwigged by the plaintiffs, so the transcripts disclose. It follows that he would lend an ex parte ear to the defendants.

Cue the orchestra and chorus: Enter Tim Balducci. Balducci thought he was going to use Henry Lackey, but Henry took Tim to school on using people. Henry saw an opportunity to unhorse Dick Scruggs, a new-comer to Northern Mississippi legal circles … a new-comer who carried a lotta baggage and had both strong enemies and friends. So, without knowing exactly which direction they might go, Henry set wheels in motion that cast Balducci as a slow-witted dupe trying as best he could to help himself by trying, as he (Tim) saw it, to help Scruggs. Henry became a government operative who continued to spin-up his dealings with Balducci so that he (Henry) would be absolved of charges of impropriety while bringing down the mighty Scruggs firm.

In a few weeks all our speculating and pondering will be over. USA v. SCRUGGS will likely go to trial and heads will roll. Then we can all move on to something else.