Today, Scruggs II began to become public, with bits of information emerging or being noticed here and there, all relating to Ed Peters, who has apparently become a government witness. This post summarizes what was learned during a very confusing fragmented day.
The drama started first thing with WLBT in Jackson reporting that Ed Peters had surrendered his law license. As we noted in an update to the post reporting the WLBT account, YallPolitics quickly put up the docket entry from the Mississippi Supreme Court in the bar discipline case. The petition surrendering the bar license and the facts that can be gleaned from it are here.
At the end of the day, the WLBT added a tidbit to all this in its later story about Peters, noting that the bar complaint was filed about nine months ago (which would be April). There’s been a lot of speculation all day about what case was the subject about that bar complaint– Wilson v. Scruggs? Kirk v. Pope? Shelton? the police manslaughter case? Eaton? There are reasons (public and private) going all over the place, and no resolution.
In a confusion over exactly what was being said, the Daily Journal briefly seemed to report that Peters had pled guilty, although actually the only thing confirmed was that he’d confessed the bar complaint. This led to a long statement from the state bar about why exactly they could not tell us much about what had occurred. All of this is here.
Paul Quinn at the Daily Mississippian got a lawyer “close to the case” to say Peters was cooperating with the United States, and another to say that Justice had “likely worked out a plea agreement” as part of the cooperation, with that part of the plea agreement.
The government seized $425K from Peters in an action filed before the first of the year, with a court order entered on it after close of business Tuesday. Patsy Brumfield at the Daily Journal was onto it first, and her story, the complaint, and the order, are all here.
I wrote two long historical posts about Peters flying the pirate flag, one about Peters being called down for proprietorial misconduct by the Mississippi Supreme Court, and one about a securities fraud case against Peters in the 70s.
All this prompted me to do some “wild-assed guessery about Scruggs II” and where it’s going.
NMC, will you be in Oxford the rest of the week in case there’s something to go see down at the courthouse?
From Patsy’s early-morning story: