Hat-tip to Catty for this find. A person named Carson Hughes today sent around the following email:
Many of you know Zach Scruggs who is an active member of the house corp. and was a commander of Sigma Nu. Most have been following the events of the past few months. Zach has entered a guilty plea to a reduced charge and the Government has recommended probation with no agreement as to the sentence to be imposed, all of which will be in the sole discretion of the court. Zach awaits sentencing by the Judge. Here is a link to the plea agreement: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Zachplea.pdf?mod=WSJBlog. The note from Zach attached asks those among us who know him and are willing to do so to write a note to be considered by the Judge at the time of sentencing. More details of his request and circumstances are in the attached letter from Zach and I urge you to read it. If you desire to write, please note that your letter should be sent to Zach’s attorney at the address therein noted and not directly to the Judge. Regardless of your feelings regarding the whole series of events surrounding and leading up to the indictment and the fall out there from and without respect to your decision as to writing a note; I urge that you hold up Zach and his family as well as all others connected in any manner with these proceedings in your prayers. It is never easy to deal with maters of this nature and that is particularly true when it involves and impacts those you know and care about
Here’s the attached letter. Woops — bad link. Okay, here’s the text:
Friends,
I wanted to give yall an update on my situation. Last Friday I had to make the most difficult and painful decision of my life. As you already know, I was charged by indictment last November for conspiracy and bribery of a state court judge. I have always maintained my innocence with respect to those charges and continue to do so to this day. As a result, I was willing to face trial by myself on those charges, which carried up to 75 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines.
Late last week, the government prosecutors agreed to drop all of the original bribery charges and instead charge me with a different and separate offense of “misprision of a felony,” which carries a potential 3 year sentence, and to recommend probation. I agreed to this. Misprison of a felony essentially means that I had knowledge of a felony and failed to report it to authorities. The particular felony I had knowledge of was that Tim Balducci, who was not our firm’s counsel of record, had improper ex parte conversations with a state court judge about our case in an effort to obtain a ruling in our favor. Although I was not aware of any money being paid to the judge, I was aware of Tim’s personal relationship with the judge and that he was using that relationship, in part, to influence the judge. I was aware of this and failed to report it or take any action to stop it. I deeply regret this failure and have taken full responsibility for my actions. I cannot comment any further on this, but you should feel free to contact my lawyers if you need a more detailed explanation of the charge.
Although the government is recommending probation, the Judge does not have to accept it. It is within the sole discretion of the Judge to determine my sentence, and he could impose anything from probation to the 3 year maximum sentence. One of the things that Federal Judges consider in determining a sentence is letters about the person charged from people who know that person well. I am therefore humbly asking each of you to write a letter to Judge Neal Biggers on my behalf. The letters should detail what kind of person I am, my attributes, and specific examples of my good character, kindness, generosity and good deeds. The more detailed the better. Letters that just say “Zach is a good guy” will not carry nearly as much weight as those that detail who I am and what I am about. It would be helpful to the judge to include who you are, how you know me, how well you know me, and how long you have known me. The more thought you put into the letter the better. But please do not write anything accusatory of the government or about the fairness of all this as that may upset the Court and make matters worse.
The Letters should be addressed to the Honorable Neal Biggers, but should not be sent to him. Instead, they should be sent to the attention of my lawyer, Nathan Garrett, by mail, email or fax. He will accumulate all the letters and send them to Judge Biggers at the same time. My sentencing hearing will be in 6-8 weeks, but the letters should be sent to my lawyer within the next week or at your earliest convenience. Nathan’s address is as follows:
Nathan Garrett
Graves Bartle & Marcus, LLC
1100 Main Street, Suite 2600
Kansas City, Missouri 64105
Direct Dial: 816-285-3052
Fax: 816-817-1216
Email: ngarrett@gbmkc.comI don’t have everyone’s email address, so please feel free to forward this request to anyone you can think of that knows me and would feel comfortable writing a letter on my behalf.
While my apologies on Friday were directed to the Court, I want each of you to know that I apologize to you. It is unfair for me to ask you to take time away from your life to help me recover from my mistake, but that is exactly what I am asking you to do. You are my friends, and I am yours. If you have any questions, please call or email Nathan Garrett (ED NOTE see contact above) or Mike Moore.
Your friend,
Zach
Looks like the link to the letter is broken.
GO SNAKES!
Don’t send them to the judge, send them to my lawyer or Mikey so they can “cull” (couldn’t help myself) out the ones they don’t want the judge to see.
Perzackly, lawN.
If were a gamblin man, and I am… after this gets out on the net completely, I bet ol’ Nathan Garrett ends up gettin a whole new email address and a new set of business cards with the new addy
(and will probably have to find a new email administrator in the process)
The Kingsford is most assuredly being squeezed, it appears. (h/t to Phantom)
I will say, though, that this letter is much better written than his preposterous and amateurish remarks to the court last Friday.
Though still not humble or regretful enough for my taste. I mean, did he not get the memo that the wiretaps weren’t sealed? We’ve read them, Zach!
At least, I find this interesting – ya’ll might too.
The original link only showed the html programming used to display the document. If you start looking at the coding (done automatically by Microsoft Word)… you will find the following lines..
DocumentProperties
Author>Nathan F. Garrett
Template>Normal
Zach didnt write this – Garrett did. If you look further, you can see our friend Lotus opened it up – she was the only one other than Garrett. I doubt Zach used Garretts puter…
Just an observation
Oh yeah – ya cant post HTML code (from the letter) in HTML code (a post here) but if ya want to see it, open the original link and scroll down about 20+ lines
I guess that would explain why the letter didn’t close with a “May God save Sigma Nu” or something of the like…
Oh, good grief! I might have known; no wonder it read so well.
Heh, heh. Good one, Coastian.
Ah’ll be, jester. The things I don’t know about in this whirled.
The news is no surprise, though, and yes, Coastian, we have our explanation of that unexpected gap now.
Bravo, jester!
Though Zach could have written it using some flat ASCII client then forwarded it on to Garrett for the appropriate scrubbing. Garrett sucks it into MS Word for mods and ends up looking like the author. While I do love good conspiracies, especially those involving Jim Hood, I just want to point out that the HTML code is hardly conclusive.
Well, Bud, I’ll just have to take y’all’s words for these alternative theories, since what you and jester know how to look at and make (different) sense of just floors me. Wowzers, am I impressed.
If y’all can explain this one piece, I’ll be rapt: how does it show that I opened it?
OR IS THAT NOT THE KIND OF THING WE SHOULD DISCUSS IN PUBLIC?
Well, I sure don’t know anything about all that computer stuff, but I’m glad you posted this. I really would like to write a letter to Judge Biggers, but I know it wouldn’t be appropriate. If I were to write such a letter, it wouldn’t be to plead for leniency for Zach — instead, I’d ask him to impose the maximum sentence.
BudF 12 – You are TOTALLY correct about HTML code “proving” nothing – heck, a good (or even just decent) html coder could make that say anything (including somebody that had never seen it, having authored it)- AND, it appears that this is the result of a “save as” so I cant tell the total history of the document, but I can tell this version of the document originated on a computer that the Microsoft Word was registered to use Nathan Garrett as the author. Again, HTML proves nothing except it (the html) exist.
Lotus – I can only assume (and we can discuss further if needed) that you oppened the original document in a Microsoft application (word, iexplore, etc..) and cut and pasted, or saved as, or several other options and the app added your name (from some registered MS product on your puter).
Computer forensics aint as fun as it used to be
Calling on his old college buddies? Wow, wonder where he learned that?
The letter is a sad, sad, spin.
jester. I’m in awe of your cyber sleuthing…the letter sounded as if it came straight from the mouth of a SNu bro,” however, w/ some cleaning. Wonder if Zach sent the draft via e to Garrett, then it was put out from there? Sorry, Just realized ole Bud already proffered the theory…
Sailor 18 – That could easily have happened. I regularly take emails that need cleaning up or I want to make certain they are perfect and copy them into Word so I can use the spell checker and thesauras (probably should have done that with this note!). Then I “save as” and copy it back into email before sending it. Anyone think Zach would actually send it his own self?
For the record I’m not passing any commentary on jester’s ability to employ a net version of one of these. No, no, no. I’m only trying to be additive to the greater folo good as a floor dweller grubbing along this avenue of Giants.
I don’t think posting that letter was quite right. I respectfully dissent. But it ain’t my blog.
Bud, you a sho-off, yes, you is!
rogerwilco, Oh, c’mon, now…that letter was quite tackily (IMO) e-mailed! I’m still of the old school etiquette class that one uses snail mail to correspond most personally. An appeal for this kind of support should have been hand-written on nice stationary to CLOSE friends. And if they’re close enough, he can damn well find an address–bet his mamma did for the wedding invites!
To me, its not all that surprising that Zach’s lawyer would have been involved in creating the letter, which is really all the Author tag proves. At some point — likely at least around the “Tuesday March 25, 2008 4:50:00 PM” date this version was last printed — it was on his computer. I mean, considering his involvement in collecting the letters, you’d really expect him to also be heavily involved in reviewing, editing (and hey, maybe creating) the letter.
One thing this does point out though — for those of us with recent copies of Microsoft Office (and most other comparable software packages) — is the need to be aware of potential information that is embedded by default in most modern documents. Microsoft Word 2007 has an “Document Inspector” feature that “[c]heck[s] the document for hidden metadata or personal information saved with the document.”
The relevant help text for this feature says:
And, honestly, what’s with the two different spellings of “misprision” in the letter? Is a spell check that hard? Even the rudimentary spell checker in Firefox text areas is highlighting “misprison” (but not “misprision”) with a red underline as I type this.
I am suprised Lotus didn’t point this out right off the bat, she usually points out typos as second nature. Right aunt Lotus?
Great find IT guy, very funny.
I have nothing to add.
Gotta second rogerwilco here. But, as he sagely pointed out, it’s not my blog either.
Zach ever heard of Metadata? Everything and everyone that opens, reads touches a MS Word doc is added to the metadata tags in the document.
Try typing one sentence in Wordpad or any regular text editor. Save it, the file will be 3 or 4k. Do the same thing in MS Word and the file will be 40 or 50k, tons of tracking data is placed in the metadata tags. If you are a lawyer and you do your work in MS Word PLEASE read about metadata and the legal profession. There are some really good CLE’S on the topic. All lawyers should know about this. Very Dangerous stuff for folks who write letters for a living.
It’s why my Microsoft stuff is all registered to (a madeup name at a madeup address). Microsoft “properties” metadata has tripped up more than one author trying to conceal the origin of a document.
In Texas, we had a big hoorah recently about a state official running for governor whose Microsoft created campaign press releases showed their origin in a state office on a state computer.
Not only lawyers, but most reporters know about the Microsoft “properties” gag and will examine .docs for information about their true source.
Well, y’all, I can’t get over how revelatory this thread’s become. But for it, I might never have heard of the Avenue of Giants — and just think how Dan Rather could have wished for the IT knowledge we’ve gleaned.
roger and zen, when a folo-reader provides something as pertinent as this communication, you bet I’m going to post it, since the business of this blog is to take us outsiders as far into the core of the story as we can collectively get. And I find Sailor 23′s point very well-taken — if you don’t want a blog-community as broad as this one to discover something, you better keep it offline. I’m sorry that we disagree to some extent on this point of taste, but seems we do.
jester, Bud, it_guy, Hatfield, and riddenword, thank youse especially for making this so fascinating and instructive a read. That we’d end up where y’all have taken us illustrates why I’m a folo addict: I just never know what folks here will teach me on any given day. (Sometimes it’s positively spooky.)
Usually, I’m in for some laughs too. One friend, peeking in on us, writes:
Ooo, nailed.
P.S. to jester 16:
Lawd, I don’t know what I did to open it — just bumbled around all over the place until something seemed to work (then come to find out, it hadn’t after all). You shoulda seen Jane and me emailing back-and-forth (“You know how to make this sucker Save?” “Huh-uh, you don’t either? Shux.”) Etc., etc. . . .
I’m going with Roger and Zen. Posting this is just piling on. Carson Hughes is a good guy who takes an active interest in young men’s lives and has the guts to continue that interest when things go badly. He’s the kind of friend I would want if I screwed up. Whoever leaked this is not.
Well, Evell, Zach Scruggs is no mere “young man for whom things have gone badly,” and he didn’t just “screw up.” If felons are the sorts of persons Carson Hughes cares to associate his name with, having his friends shooting at messengers won’t help. And I imagine he knew that going in; if not, his bone-to-pick is with Graves and Garrett, not folo.
Thanks, Dragoman @6. I’d say he’s working on a good one, fuh sho!
Lotus and Sailor,
I don’t completely disagree with your points. That’s why I didn’t carry on more about the issue, but just registered my disagreement. It’s a letter that was unwisely circulated via email and came into folo’s hands, therefore fair game. I just view the posting as a little much, since he’s pled guilty and is now soliciting some sentencing letters to Judge Biggers. Zach’s tone is one of his major problems now. He doesn’t have it in him to strike a genuinely contrite tone. He needs woodshedding about his tone.
He needs to use some manners by sending hand-written notes of request, which would go a long way, I think , in creating a more humble tone.
FYI, if you’re concerned about metadata, you might want to try a program like Workshare to strip it out.
roger, we reconverge (thought we would before long), and yes, I appreciate your point too, if I correctly perceive that it’s “Not everything needs to be hauled into the light.”
No, everything doesn’t (for instance, Carson Hughes’s email address or that of the list to which he sent this, both of which you see I withheld).
But Zach Scruggs’s state of mind and attempts to avoid punishment warrant as much revelation as we can give them, I believe — ergo, my click on the Publish button.
We know now that at least one recipient of this email was disgusted enough to launch it (pretty immediately) toward folo. So I wonder if/how many others similarly situated feel the same way, especially among the subset that belong to both the fraternity and the MS Bar. Interesting question . . .
Lotus, I can say that I see nothing wrong with your post. If Zach didn’t want it to get out he should have taken a different approach.
Amen, Stormy.
ANYTHING sent electronically should be assumed to be part of the public domain. Doesn’t matter how many times it’s marked confidential or how many “please don’t forwards” are included, it is out there and can’t be taken back.
The more I sit and think about it the request is rather tacky, they don’t want you to just say that Zach is a good ole boy but they didn’t even make the effort to make the letter request more personable. I think my repsonse would have to be,”Bite me Zach, hate it for ya.”
Scratching my head.. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sympathetic to Scruggs et al (et al and AT all), but – now, how do you truly know this is legit?
On its face, it looks a bit contrived.
Shelby, do your “this” and “it” refer to the letter-writing requests? “Contrived”? Do you mean you suspect the whole thing’s a hoax? Why?
I’ll add that it is possible to have known and cared for Zach, been a friend of his and hate this situation—hate what he’s done, but still care about him and his family… AND still believe that he is guilty, believe that he deserves jail time and not probation. I don’t know Zach personally, but we have a mutual friend (atty, not frat bro) who feels this way and did receive the letter also, but won’t be writing in support of probation.
after all this, who’s next – is this the end?
Thoughts, you are probably right on. But, I think the opposite point of view has legs too. That his role wasn’t large, the prosecutors worked out a charge that covered his crime, his statement was thorough and contrite and he is only asking for what the prosecution recommended. Showing support from his friends and the community is common place in penalty hearings isn’t it?
To quote the sage of the Yankees, sammy, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” And this doesn’t seem to be over.
Can the note to Judge Biggers be written on a napkin?
This kind of request goes out all the time. I’d imagine every criminal defendant with a lawyer worth his salt is encouraged to round up letters of support. I got a request from an old law school classmate who was about to be disbarred in Texas. The grounds: He had already been disbarred in MS. I tossed the letter immediately, so I can’t quote it. He wasn’t a friend (though not an enemy, either), and one of the few things I knew about him was that he was heavily involved in the administration of football gambling on campus and that he was disbarred in MS for embezzling from his law firm as an associate. As y’all said, he didn’t want the letter I’d write.
Potential nominees for federal judge go through the same nonsense.
The ‘this’ and the ‘it’ is the email correspondence reportedly being sent around by Zach.
Yeah, at first blush, it smacks of a hoax. But, if it’s in fact sent by Zach – or at his behest – wow, not impressed by his decision to put it out electronically, where he should’ve known it’d become public de jour of the day.
Or maybe that was the intent – to stir up any and all compassion worth finding.
One trouble with casting a wide net tho is getting alot of whatchadon’twonte – mo critics.
I hope the judge doesn’t see this letter, as it would make the judge want to give him some time, if he isn’t already leaning in that direction. I agree Zach Scruggs, his wife, his mother and father and others close to him should be kept in all of our prayers.
The letter was created from an Office Document on Nathan F. Garrett’s computer and edited by someone named Jan Goodrich.
It has been spell checked and grammar checked -
Look at the HTML!
Ahem. Since I know that Goodrich broad intimately, I can attest that “edited” means “copied to folo, and that’s it.”
My 66 plus years of knowledge tells me that lotus acted perfectly correct in posting the letter. As a matter of fact I think she had a certain amount of responsibility to us folo followers of this saga to do such.
What are you going to pray for Dog? A long sentence, wisdom to Judge Biggers, groveling by Zach, that the prosecutors had recommended serving time?
Infidel, what i would pray for is comfort to the family in a difficult time, comfort to Zach Scruggs who probably realizes he blew it in the most spectacular fashion, and, yes, wisdom to the judge who has a difficult decision whether to send this young man to jail. I would never hope or pray that another person would grovel, but genuine contrition seems rarer every day among criminals, and when it emerges, it is something to behold. Zach’s comments at the plea hearing and in this letter–which i understand his lawyers wrote for him–seem sterile and self serving. If i were the lawyer, I’d warm it up a bit and at least make it look genuine.
Sun Herald reports this am that Dickie is fighting disbarment. Too much time on his hands? http://www.sunherald.com/201/story/456283.html
Lest anybody think I haven’t paid for writing this post (and accessing the email on which it’s based), now my email-spamcatcher’s filling up with the likes of this crap:
Cute.
Because of Zach my family as of June 2007, received payment for our home………because of Zach we have beds,clothes, furniture….our kids were able to go back to school, we were able to reopen our business (we have been self employed for 32 years) Zack is honorable and I think all of you must just hate him for being rich and successful. He will do his year or so and still be rich and you all will still be making a pay check. My son graduated from Ole Miss too and you fraternity boys are probably loosers and were loosers at Ole Miss. I think you are just a bunch of jealous )NOT TRUST FUND BABIES) is what eats at you most.I trust him completely and would give anything to help him receive clemency. As far as Dickie goes the same goes for him. Never in a million years (Yes he is a Billionaire) would he use that scum from North Ms. if he had bribed a judge. and if he did….the judge just didn’t like the amount.