How the case that transformed this blog took shape:
If you’re just becoming aware of this strange situation we call “Scruggsiana,” you may want to review a few earlier posts in the series to get up-to-speed quickly. For instance:
- The story broke first with a search of Dickie Scruggs’s law office on November 27, 2007, then the indictment of Scruggs and four others the next day. This drew folo’s attention, along with the observation that Dickie is Trent Lott’s brother-in-law, and that Lott had resigned the day before the search. Scruggs was indicted along with his son Zach, their law partner Sid Backstrom, and Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson for bribing circuit judge Henry Lackey in the case Jones, Funderburg v. Scruggs. folo ran descriptions of news accounts of the arraignment (and grounding of Scruggs’s plane), and later a post about the indictment and local coverage of the arraignment.
- The Wall Street Journal did a story about the case, interviewing Judge Lackey, who has not talked about the case to the media since.
- By December 1, observers noted that a defendant seemed scarce in public view, and news reports began to appear suggesting that defendant Tim Balducci, the lawyer accused of actually approaching Judge Lackey about the bribe, had become a witness for the government. This was confirmed when Balducci was arraigned and then pled guilty on December 5.
- Also on December 5, Trent Lott gave an interview in Washington in which he denied any coincidence in timing between his retirement and the Scruggs investigation (which, he said, he had not known about ahead of time).
- As time passed, folo began to sort through the Jones, Funderburg lawsuit, posting several times about that lawsuit and other background information.
- One of the most significant (if slow-emerging) pieces of the whole mess is the interweaving of private and public forces and resources that’s gone on for several years in Mississippi. Not only private attorneys but state officeholders now have more splaining to do than they may be equipped for (just sayin’).
- The ones to whom this job of delicate splaining will fall are, of course, the defense attorneys hired by the accused. folo has done its dead-level best to keep up with who’s whose, but it seems practically none of these guys much want to dance with who brung ‘im. (This is the one page on the whole site that may tickle the illiterate — even cats crack up when they see it.)
- December 10 marked two phenomena of related import: Joey Langston’s law office got raided, leading to what still stands as folo’s funniest comment-thread to date. (Er, sometimes posts giggle and run away too.)
- Lest you suspect Trent Lott of being the only (ex-)U.S. Senator whose name has come up in Scruggsiana, Fred Thompson and Joe Biden woefully beg to differ.
- On December 14, other names swam into clearer (if not yet “clear”) focus, including David Nutt and Bill Jones — and never let us overlook P.L. Blake, the man to whom Dickie Scruggs is paying $50 million over 20 years . . . though neither can quite explain why.
- And then along came former Hinds County (Jackson) D.A. Ed Peters and current Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter to open up another vein of this mother lode of reek (“Who and where next?” echoes folo’s constant refrain).
There’s much, much more to Scruggsiana — other cases (civil and criminal) in both Mississippi and Alabama, other important figures, other pots of money whose destinations are still to be discovered — but this much will get you well started. Lawd only knows how long it may take, but at some far-distant point — we dare say — it will also be well ended.
lotus and NMC
