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The complexity of the various messes that make up the Scruggs scandals can overwhelm at times, causing reporters and other writers to glide over details in ways that can leave a reader with a misapprehension. And nowhere is this mess more baroque than Wilson v. Scruggs. A further complication is that the case was long under seal and the file is now in the hands of the F.B.I.; the events have to be gleaned from pleadings that have emerged indirectly (when parts of the proceedings came before other courts or on appeal, where the records were not sealed) or from the docket itself. What follows is pieced together from those sorts of sources plus the facts that have emerged in the prosecutions of Langston, Balducci, and Patterson. I would greatly appreciate comments from lawyers who may have been involved as to how close this account is to what happened.

An innocent reader of Jerry Mitchell’s story in today’s Clarion Ledger might infer that there had been a “bench trial” (that is, a trial by the judge without a jury) of Wilson’s claims. In a bullet list near the top of the story, Mitchell notes that among the rulings by DeLaughter being examined was one “[s]aying the plaintiffs wanted a bench trial when their attorneys said they didn’t.” Farther down, the story says: “Later, DeLaughter said an order that Wilson’s attorneys had asked for ‘a bench trial, so to speak’ in the case, but they never asked for any such bench trial.”

A reader of this article would probably conclude that what Judge DeLaughter did was have a bench trial instead of having a jury trial. But that’s not what happened. The key language here (contained in Mitchell’s quote from one of DeLaughter’s order) is “so to speak.”

The Wilson case was a claim by Wilson against Scruggs for attorneys fees owed from cases they had done together before 1992. The case had been in litigation twelve years by 2006 and was approaching trial. On June 12, 2006, Wilson’s lawyers filed three "Motions to Quantify, " each asking Judge DeLaughter to order that Scruggs was going to have to pay the amounts he had no basis to contest.

Judge DeLaughter’s next move after Wilson’s lawyers had filed the motion to quantify shocked Wilson’s lawyers. What they did not know was even more shocking: DeLaughter had planned this move by secretly consulting with Balducci and Langston through Peters. According to their plea agreements and other evidence that has emerged, he even let them help him write the orders, exchanging drafts by e-mail, to assure that the case was moving in the direction Scruggs sought.

DeLaughter entered the orders he’d secretly worked out with Balducci and Langston on July 7th. The basic theme was struck by one of the orders, an "Order Quantifying Monies Due Plaintiffs From Defendants. " This order seemed to respond to the three motions Wilson’s lawyer had filed. But the judge started by noting that there are "items on which there was little or no agreement, " which was the opposite of what Wilson’s lawyers had argued: That there were amounts that were not disputed, and Scruggs should be forced to pay them. DeLaughter’s order then said: "Since Wilson has asked the Court to determine all of these amounts, including those in conflict, the Court does so as a trier of fact –a bench trial, so to speak, but only on the filings and submissions of the parties. "

The key phrase here is "so to speak. " A bench trial is one where the judge (instead of a jury) decides the facts, as with any trial, after each side has an opportunity to put on witnesses. No hearing of any sort –much less a trial –had occurred between the filing of Wilson’s motions and the court’s order. Wilson had nowhere asked the court to decide contested facts without a trial, yet the court pretended he had, noting disingenuously that Scruggs did not object to this short cut. Judge DeLaughter then noted that Scruggs and Wilson each had disagreeing expert reports, and that as a trier of fact, he was going to assign more credibility to Scruggs’s expert Stephanie Smith than to Wilson’s expert Saul Solomon. And in the second order filed that day, he did exactly that.

The problem with this is that Judge DeLaughter was deciding which expert was the more credible witness when he had never seen Smith or Solomon testify. He did not even have a sworn affidavit from Scruggs’s expert.

With these three orders, DeLaughter wiped out almost all of Wilson’s claims.

For those who are curious, the other two phases of the attack on Wilson’s case were in early 2006 (when DeLaughter rejected the special master’s recommendation) and in August, just prior to the trial setting (when Judge DeLaughter announced that Wilson’s claim had a negative balance and that there was nothing left to try).