folo

Last week, I wrote about the mail fraud charge, that the conspiracy denied the state the “honest services” of Judge DeLaughter. I noted that the indictment charged that a state criminal statute placed a positive duty on the judge to decide cases without improper influence.

In the Supreme Court, there’s a recent dissent from a decision not to take a case that sheds some interesting light on the point of that part of the indictment. The case before the Supreme Court involved corruption by Chicago city employees. The Seventh Circuit had approved a jury instruction that stated: “As part of the honest services they owed the City and the people of the City of Chicago” were what Scalia describes as “a laundry list of ‘laws, decrees, and policies.’” His dissent quotes the Seventh Circuit: “It may well be that merely by virtue of being public officials the defendants inherently owed the public a fiduciary duty to discharge their offices in the public’s best interest.”

Scalia’s opinion notes that, unlike the Seventh Circuit, the Fifth requires a violation of a specific state law for an “honest services” mail fraud conviction. Essentially resisting the impulse to federalize all bad acts, Scalia makes clear he thinks the Fifth Circuit view is correct. The Scalia dissent makes clear that at least in his (at this point solitary) view, prosecutors need to be reined in somewhat on overbroad applications of the mail fraud statute. No other justice joined his dissent.

Obviously, the reference to the state statute in the DeLaughter indictment is to satisfy the Fifth Circuit rule that there must be a violation of specific state law.

h/t Anderson

[Read more →]

If you read folo, you’re almost certainly a news junkie — possibly you’re here only because you’re a foodie, a bluesie, or a pettie, but I doubt it. And folo is a comparatively unusual news-following blog, in that we have NMC, an on-the-scene (when the scene is Oxford, Mississippi) subject-matter expert whose original reporting frequently breaks real news.

But most newsblogs are more like non-Scruggs folo: published by an individual or small group of unpaid posters who, no matter how interested, are rarely positioned to do the actual reporting themselves. They can only aggregate and comment on reported stories of interest to them, and if they do a good enough job to draw a sizeable readership, their readers sometimes take it from there to exert leverage on government officials. But what happens when the sources they rely on for their fodder dry up and blow away?

Recall our travails last week with the Beckwith Gun story. After fascinating but conflicting versions, we finally got hold of a first-hand source, a former C-L reporter who described how his digging pried the damned gun out of the Moore/DeLaughter closets where it sat hidden for 30 years. But that knowledge came our way only because “C” put us in touch with Michael Rejebian. (And not even Michael can resolve the question of how Judge Russell Moore originally came by the rifle; most likely, anyone who saw that happen first-hand is dead now — or at least not in touch with folo.)

But here’s the deal: We folo posters couldn’t do that reporting, and the Gannett-paid C-L reporters of today wouldn’t do it. So where does that leave us?

Here —

Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)
by Paul Starr
Why American politics and society are about to be changed for the worse.

This is a long but terribly important New Republic article that I’m most interested in hearing your reactions to. It concludes:

News coverage is not all that newspapers have given us. They have lent the public a powerful means of leverage over the state, and this leverage is now at risk. If we take seriously the notion of newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself. Newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both government and business. If we are to avoid a new era of corruption, we are going to have to summon that power in other ways. Our new technologies do not retire our old responsibilities.

Best I can tell, BoynamedSioux summed up the Clarion-Ledger very well yesterday:

… In the last 5 to 6 years, it has steadily declined in every aspect: reporting, management, and viewpoint. Its a very weak excuse for a newspaper at this time.

Yes it is, but for now it’s still most people’s best source of information about government, business, and the rest of life in Jackson and Mississippi. This P.L. Blake story that the editors put into print but not online yesterday gave us a preview of what’s coming: Almost all of us reading here had to take NMC’s word for what was in the article.

So that’s what looms ahead — as in much earlier times, a very small number of in-the-knows will control what the rest of us find out. Though in this example, NMC is trustworthy, what if your only source of news came down to something like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox? McCain-Palin represents the quality of government we should expect everywhere, not just in Haley Barbour-and-Butch Brown Mississippi.

Newsblogs can’t be the answer. Because, like almost all others doing what we do, NMC and I haven’t figured out how to generate a revenue stream, folo has provided me only a great diversion (and some delightful friends!) while going stone-broke. And I’m hardly alone — as Paul Starr documents, the newspapers themselves are leading the way down (note how PajamasMedia rode along to its recent crash). But as Starr more importantly points out, when stores lose their minders, the corrupt take over.

I don’t know. Maybe some things will just have to fail before the pain of loss elevates the perceived value of robust reporting and America figures out anew how to support it. Whether folo survives in its present form, or at all, to see that is for me an unhappy question.

[Read more →]

I’m about to set off for a weekend away from the computer, so unless NMC comes up with something tomorrow AM, this open thread may have to do for two mornings. Y’all have fun and I’ll catch ya sometime tomorrow PM, central-Florida traffic willing . . .

When the longtime aide of a state’s senior U.S. Senator gets charged with a federal felony, wouldn’t you expect the state’s leading newspaper to report same?

Other places’ leading newsers — for instance, the Washington Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Fort Worth Star Telegram, NPR, and CNN — carry the “Ann Copland busted” story. Though many are running just a graf or two of Nedra Pickle’s AP story, the Sun Herald prints the fullest version, while the DJ, as we saw, links the Information itself.

But the Jackson Clarion-Ledger? As I type, not a peep yet. Maybe by the time you’re up-and-about online, Ann Copland will have hit the C-L’s site too, but at the moment, its Metro/State page carries only stories less important than this one.

I don’t know, would you subscribers (if a few remain here) care to mention this to the editors? Either they don’t yet understand the Net’s destruction of their ability to keep secrets, or it’s just their general resistance to anything tending to prompt scary questions for friendly Senators. In any case, this sort of thing is, I’m afraid, an indication of what we can expect as newspapers die off.

(Which reminds me of those NYT shares I finally dumped at a substantial loss several years ago; at an incredibly-lower share-price now, the company has just halted its dividends too. Look for the cousins to get rid of Pinch — too late.)

Remember those worse-than-DeLaughter Pennsylvania judges from last week? Another story growing skankier.

Word is that Bobby Jindal might run for President in 2012. Could be that, having just trashed his re-election prospects (does he think Louisiana’s unemployed work-force won’t stick around to vote — or maybe riot?), he’s left himself only that choice.

I’m borrowing an LAT headline (just because I can) to link a ChiTrib story: Support for Roland Burris falls apart. ChiTrib’s unscientific reader-poll is the most lopsided I’ve ever seen.

This is NOT the Saddy Animals post (that’s coming right up), but jeebus, woudja look at John Cole’s obese cat! Tunch is, his markings say, a Turkish Van. Though TVs are supposed to be big swimmers, Tunch doesn’t seem much for athletics — but his combings with that new-fangled grooming-gizmo surely do bring new meaning to the term “littermate,” don’t they?

[Read more →]

Recall that between Christmas and New Year, a proceeding styled “U.S. v. $425,000 in United States Currency” was filed in the Northern District federal court, saying that Ed Peters had that money and it wasn’t rightfully his.

Roberts Wilson has come to court and said “That’s right, because it’s mine.” Here’s the pleading where he asserts that.

The most interesting things about Wilson’s pleading are in a footnote and an affidavit which gives Joey Langston’s account of the reverse contingent fee payment Scruggs offered.

The footnote to Wilson’s pleading answers one question (did Langston get his cash?) while raising another– it states that, although the agreement would have given Langston $3M, Scruggs “ultimately offset other claimed credits against Langston’s $3,000,000″ but that Peter’s take was $1M.

So what about Patterson? (I’ve heard that the $1M was all that was paid). And this is the question: What were the credits on which Langston owed $1M or $2M to Scruggs?

The affidavit describes the scheme: That Scruggs would give Langston anything he paid less than $3M to Wilson. When DeLaughter zeroed out Wilson, Langston was entitled to $3M (although, as per the footnote, he only actually got $1M. So sad).

The pleading also outlines the events surrounding the rulings where DeLaughter zeroed Wilson out.

Patsy Brumfield wrote about all this in the Daily Journal. H/t to NoMiss for pointing to that article in comments.

[Read more →]

Last week, I posted about the difficulties in working out a defense presented by the DeLaughter indictment, focused on the interaction of the charge of lying to the FBI (Count 5) and the mail fraud charges (Counts 2-4). Yesterday, I described some law and issues relating to the mail fraud charges. There’s also a bribery charge (Count 1), charging a conspiracy to violate 18 USC §666.  Some of the issues I mentioned in the prior posts overlap on this charge.

The indictment alleges that the Scruggs folks corruptly offered to give and “Judge BOBBY B. DELAUGHTER to accept and to agree to accept for himself and others” a thing of value worth more than $5,000 to “corruptly influence and reward[ him] in connection with his handling of the Wilson case…”

The phrase “agree to accept for himself and others” caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Look at the statutory language of §666– it makes it a crime where an agent of state government “accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any person… .”  The language “for himself or others” isn’t statutory. The “himself” is certainly implied in the statute. “Accept for… others” is the interesting part. It is clear that a quid pro quo (the judge gets this consideration, and gives that order) violates the statute. But the “or others” goes a step further, and raises the possibility of an exchange benefiting a third party– “don’t give the money to me, give it to my friend”? That is a part of what the Government seems to be alleging here.

So that’s legal issue #1 on this count: Can the Government show a bribe in the form of a third-party beneficiary contract– “If you rule for us, we will give your friend $1M.”

Also, the government is alleging they will show DeLaughter “agreed.” That’s statutory language and may just be boilerplate. By all reports, the only witness with direct access to DeLaughter will be Ed Peters. So will Peters testify that he had an agreement with DeLaughter about how this was all to go down? (I’m not suggesting that the Government has to prove a handshake moment– if they just prove the sequence of events, they’ll have what they need).

Was it a case-by-case agreement or did they have an across-the-board arrangement? (I’m reminded again of the idea that Peters said to DeLaughter, “I’ll keep all the cash and then I’ll take care of you in the end”).

I’m reading the indictment to allege alternative bribes– that DeLaughter got for himself the consideration for a federal judge slot and for others the cash Peters took. Both of course can be true. The thing of value has to be worth $5,000 or more, and the $1M Peters got certainly is that. But what about what DeLaughter got? A federal judge’s slot is certainly worth more than $5K, but DeLaughter didn’t get that– he got consideration for a slot. What’s that worth? Will that become an issue in the trial? Could it become important for the government to make the “for others” part stick because of this issue? (I am sure there will be an argument in a directed-verdict motion about this but don’t think the argument that consideration for a judgeship isn’t worth $5K will derail this case).

That’s legal issue #2:  Does “consideration” for a federal judge’s slot, in the form of a call from a Senator that one is on the list, satisfy the requirement that one get $5K in value?

Next we get a description of what DeLaughter would do in return for the thing of value and the feeding of his “aspirations to become a federal judge”– the agreement was “to secretly and corruptly obtain rulings from the court that while not plainly unlawful, would ultimately minimize Scruggs’ financial liability….”

Secretly (ex parte contact) and corruptly and not plainly unlawful are key phrases here. I’m reading “not plainly unlawful” to mean that the Government is effectively conceding that the rulings are not (on their face– just reading them) illegal. That is, they are within the range of possible judge-like responses to the issues before the judge. So if they aren’t “unlawful,” how are they “corrupt”? (corrupt being, of course, statutory language).

Here, we are back into issues very similar to those I discussed on the mail fraud count, where I talked about the issue of whether the rulings were “honest.” Are they “honest” if, even though proper, they were obtained by a dishonest process? On the bribery charge, instead of the question being about the “honesty” of the rulings, it is about whether they are “corrupt.”

That’s Legal Issue #3:  Will it suffice to show that the rulings were “corrupt” if the Government shows that the rulings (even if arguably proper) were obtained through improper means such as ex parte contact?

Which doubles us back to that first word, “secretly.” Is it enough for the Government to show that the rulings were obtained through a secret and improper process?

The overt acts alleged in the indictment mostly are straightforward descriptions of what widespread coverage said happened: Scruggs asked Langston and his firm to take the lead in the case. Langston and Balducci in August of 2005 flew to Jackson and gave Peters $50,000 in cash. On January 19, 2006, Langston and Balducci entered appearances in the case. DeLaughter gave the Scruggs team an advance copy of his court order on February 27th. In August, Peters and DeLaughter had a series of ex parte meetings “designed and intended to secretly influence the judge to shade his rulings in favor of Scruggs. On March 29, Scruggs caused Senator Lott “to offer Judge DeLaughter consideration for appointment to a federal judgeship then open in the Southern District of Mississippi.” From October 2006 until October 2007, Langston wired $950,000 from his law office to Ed Peters to corruptly influence Judge DeLaughter.

I find one passage in the overt-acts section confusing. The indictment alleges that in January, 2006, DeLaughter “accepted a secret, ex parte communication from the Scruggs legal team, essentially reversing his earlier ruling and accepting, almost verbatim, a scheduling order favorable to Scruggs.” This passage seems to be missing a linkage between what DeLaughter accepted from Scruggs and the ruling he made, but I’m not sure.

[Read more →]

A belated good morning, thanks to RoadRunner (grrrr).

Though we’ve apparently got the “Discovery of the Whereabouts of the Beckwith Gun” issue better settled, what about the new issue it carried into view — the death of Matthew Moore? Son of Judge Russell Moore, brother-in-law of ADA Bobby DeLaughter, friend of reporter Michael Rejebian, Matthew Moore was found dead of a gunshot to the back of the head in downtown Jackson, recalls MSlawyer, on August 27, 1995.

Yesterday when I asked Michael Rejebian what he recalls about this, he replied,

I remember getting a phone call from Jerry Mitchell at the CL early one morning that Matthew was found shot to death. He was found at his car downtown around 7 a.m. I think the ruling was suicide but a lot of questions persisted for a while regarding the location of the bullet wound, etc. I think Jerry wrote some stories so he may have more details. Matthew had left the city attorney’s office and was in private practice. He had represented the owner(s) of an adult entertainment establishment that had recently opened in Jackson and some surmised that there was a connection. I don’t know.

By now I figure that Matthew Moore must be the one my correspondent who first broached the Rejebian account (let’s call this person “C” for “Correspondent”) recalled as the body on Amite Street. But another foloer from Jackson had meanwhile emailed,

Did you know that Judge Moore’s son, Matt, was also found shot behind his law office at the corner of High and North Streets. Many years ago. I don’t know if this was a suicide or an unsolved murder.

So we’ve got slightly-conflicting memories of the location of the body (though I gather that Amite Street and the High/North corner aren’t far apart). But note that two of you make a similar point about motive (whether for suicide or murder):

First, “C” wrote to me yesterday of Rejebian’s deceased source,

I’m not saying his death had anything to do with any of this — he was a troubled man (though it’s possible his troubledness was related to the Ed Peters underworld, who knows?). I did think it was odd that someone would choose Amite St., which is in downtown Jackson — it runs parallel to Capitol St., a block over — to shoot themselves, and at 7 a.m., by his car.

Later, Xenos would comment on-blog,

… The consensus among the Jackson legal community is that [it] was not suicide. You [MSlawyer] called it on the DA, chief asst DA and recall how closely the City PD was associated with the DA office at that time. Many have floated a link to adult entertainment, which was allegedly Dixie mafia at that time, which also allegedly had connections to Peters. Six (or less) degrees of [separation] are lurking somewhere.

Hmm. Adult entertainment > Dixie Mafia > Ed Peters > ???

Why, do you reckon if we — or better yet, the FBI — keep tugging on this thread, that sooner or later the mysterious $50 million central figure in Ed Peters’ underworld, ol’ P.L. Blake, might be noticed in the vicinity of its far end? Sure hope some agents are still reading folo . . .

In any case, Michael Rejebian gets the last word:

I do know that Matthew was a great guy and a good friend. He was quiet and always seemed to have it together. He had a family and they, of course, were devastated by his death. I think I remember they moved from Jackson after his death, but not absolutely sure. Anyway, it was a tragedy. Matthew was one of those rare people you always think about long after they’re gone.

[Read more →]

In comments, a question was raised whether the mail fraud statutes are designed to cover the sort of things charged in the DeLaughter indictment, which I thought an interesting question. The answer is that the statutes were amended with something like this in mind.

In 1988, in specific response to a US Supreme Court case, McNally v. United States, that held the mail fraud statutes did not cover denial of honest services of public officials, Congress added a section to the mail fraud statutes that says: “For the purposes of this chapter, the term ’scheme or artifice to defraud’ includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” That statute, codified as 18 USC § 1346, is the engine that is driving Counts Two through Four of the indictment brought against Bobby DeLaughter.

The basic mail fraud statute, 18 USC § 1341, seems addressed to what we normally think of as fraud:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises … places in any post office or authorized depository for mail matter, any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by the Postal Service … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

As noted, §1346 defines that phrase “defraud” as to include “depriv[ing] another of the intangible right of honest services.” Judge DeLaughter is charged with conspiring to do this– that is, he was part of a scheme that used the mails in a “scheme or artifice to defraud” that is, a scheme “to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

The statute has been applied to include schemes involving judges and cases before them. In U.S. v. Long, 95 Fed. Appx. 483 (4th Cir. 2004), a municipal judge who was also mayor was fixing DUI cases by reducing the charges to reckless driving (with a fine substantially higher than that usual for reckless driving) and telling the drivers to contest their license spending before the DMV hearing, then ordering police officers on pain of firing not to show up at the DMV hearing so the defendants would get their drivers licenses back. In U.S. v. Frega, 933 F.Supp. 1536 (S.D. Cal. 1996), the indictment alleged that a pair of lawyers had lavished gifts on a judge (my favorite of the alleged gifts was $1,200 to pay someone to ghost write a novel for the judge). In U.S. v. Brumley, 116 F.3d 728 (5th Cir. 1997), the statute was applied to a Texas workers comp director who was taking “loans” (never repaid) from lawyers who were appearing before him. Brumley argued that the statute did not reach either ethical lapses or conduct that involved purely state concerns; the court rejected both arguments.

Note that in Long, the mayor wasn’t getting the money generated by the scheme– it was going to the town for which he was mayor.

I think it pretty clear that the 1988 amendment was designed to reach the sort of conduct alleged here.

With that, I’m going to comment on some possible defenses now that I’ve looked at some cases under the statute. There are some key words here:

Honest

Can Judge DeLaughter say that he wasn’t denying anyone “honest services” because he ruled correctly and how he should have ruled in any event, and therefore there’s no fraud?

If that’s a defense, that means that a trial would involve a trial-within-the-trial about the correctness of the rulings DeLaughter made, and possibly some expert testimony. If his rulings were even arguably correct, does he walk on mail fraud?

There’s a possible major flaw in this argument, though, noted below under the heading “concealment.”

Scienter

By definition, a fraud scheme involves knowing you’re committing fraud– that’s what is known as the scienter requirement for fraud. The 7th circuit case I mentioned states that this element requires the public official have notice of the illegality of their act. There’s a split among the courts as to whether there has to be a violation of free-standing legal obligations (the argument is made that mere ethical lapses don’t suffice, for instance, and that there has to be some violation of a stated duty), while other courts have ruled that there’s no such requirement.

It seems clear that the reason the DeLaughter indictment specifically cites Miss. Code Ann. § 97-11-53, which makes it a state crime to illegally influence a public official, is to cover this possible requirement and to make clear that DeLaughter was on notice he was acting illegality. Can the prosecutors also cite anti-earwigging rules for that purpose?

This is a place that the “honest” part recurs– if DeLaughter still meant to rule correctly, did he have the mental state (scienter) required for fraud? There are cases that support, and other cases that reject, these arguments DeLaughter could make about whether he was going to be “honest” and whether there was a denial of anything tangible if it didn’t effect his rulings.

Concealment

The off-the-record contact by Peters is critical. There are cases that hold that concealment of a conflict of interest will suffice to violate this statute. If the Government wants to push the envelope a little, it could argue that Peters’ off-the-record contact with DeLaughter funneling defense information to the judge all by itself denied the public of DeLaughter’s honest services, even if it did not affect his rulings.

It seems to me that allowing one side back-room against-the-rules-and-law access to the judge (in an information flow that was a two-way circuit, to boot) certainly denies the public of the honest services of a judge…

Proof

So what kind of proof issues does all this imply? If I were defending DeLaughter and worried about the whole problem whether he can testify (given the charge of a lie to the FBI agent, the grand jury testimony, and so on), I would try to get some expert testimony, and there are some obvious possibilities:

• An expert who perhaps could testify that DeLaughter’s rulings were at least arguably correct. This has the potential of having a (seemingly) neutral witness say what DeLaughter needs to tell the jury: That these rulings were honest. Thus no denial of honest services.
• The actual expert from the Wilson case. As I understand it, what DeLaughter did was reject a special master’s ruling that largely accepted the expert testimony advanced by the Wilson side and rejected that put forward by the Scruggs side. I’d be seriously considering calling that expert to say “Oh, yes, my testimony was honest and correct, and Judge DeLaughter was honest and correct to accept it.” If I’m correct about who this witness is, it is someone closely associated with Scruggs, so Scruggs’s guilty plea may be complicating here, but surely that expert would have to stand by their prior testimony.
• Scruggs’s lawyers other than Langston and Balducci. The indictment accepts the version of this tale that Scruggs decided in late ‘05 / early ‘06 to bring in Langston and Balducci to work Peters to dishonestly influence DeLaughter. Before that decision, Scruggs was represented by widely respected lawyers about whom there has not been a hint of impropriety in this case; presumably they were advancing the arguments on which Scruggs ultimately “prevailed”– the suggestion is not that Langston and Balducci brought new arguments to the table but rather went through the backroom to make sure the old arguments won.  Presumably, the earlier lawyers would have to say that they advanced arguments they thought legitimate and took seriously.

In some ways, these theories would make this trial more like a legal malpractice case than a fraud case, much less a normal criminal case!

If DeLaughter’s defense takes any of these tacks, it gives the defense the possibility of defending the honesty of DeLaughter’s decisions without DeLaughter needing to take the stand to defend them.

Will that be enough? This is where the issues I raised under the heading “concealment” become critical. If the backroom ex parte contact to influence a judge’s decisions suffice– without regard to whether the judge ruled correctly, the jury will be invited in the jury instructions to convict DeLaughter without regard to whether his rulings were correct.

Which, by the way, means that there may be another kind of expert testimony in this case: Testimony about the propriety of the backroom ex parte contact.

Do all these suggestions for how the defense can handle the case mean I no longer think that the judge has a hard row to hoe? Nope. I still do, but am now of the opinion that there are some interesting angles the defense can work in this case.

I’ll close out by noting that given all these issues, I would not be surprised to see a motion to dismiss from the defense side, arguing what’s called the rule of lenity– that this statute doesn’t sufficiently charge as a crime honest rulings made in a process involving back room conduct. I would expect such a motion to be a loser but serve to bring before the judge issues that will become key when the judge decides how to instruct the jury about all the issues described in this post.

[Read more →]

I’ve just very gratefully received this email from Michael Rejebian:

Lotus, feel free to post if interested…

The following is an account of the day that the “missing” gun used to kill Medgar Evers was located and reported found, clearing the way for the 1994 re-trial of Byron De La Beckwith:

As a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger in the late 80s and early 90s, my final assignment was that of City Hall reporter covering Jackson politics. I was sitting in then-Police Chief Charles Newell’s office that day, getting an update on some new administrative policy at JPD that I have long since forgotten. During the previous weeks, stories had been written about the Hinds County DA’s efforts to re-open the Evers-Beckwith case and the supposed difficulty in locating the murder weapon. Without it, DA Ed Peters and his assistant, Bobby DeLaughter, insisted they could not re-try the case.

At the end of my conversation with Chief Newell (a longtime Jackson police officer), I just happened to ask him if he ever had heard of what became of the Beckwith rifle. I honestly don’t know what prompted the question. Yes, he said, he had heard the gun had long been in the possession of the late Hinds County Circuit Judge Russell Moore.

Later the same day, while at City Hall, I ran into Deputy City Attorney Matthew Moore (now deceased, but one of the truly genuine people I ever met.) Again, I don’t know why, but I asked Matthew the same question. His answer: “Bobby DeLaughter came and got it from my dad’s closet.” I asked, “Who is your dad?” Russell Moore, he said. And DeLaughter, at the time, was Russell Moore’s son in law.

Startled by that revelation and the fact that the DA’s office had lied about the rifle’s existence, I questioned Matthew further. I happened to have a tape recorder in my coat pocket and switched it on. As Matthew recounted, his father had kept the rifle after the earlier Beckwith trials as a “souvenir.” As a boy, Matthew had often gone into the closet to look at the weapon and asked his dad about its significance. “That’s the gun that killed Medgar Evers,” was his reply to his son.

I asked Matthew if he would go on the record with his story and he said only if I could get DeLaughter to first confirm he had the rifle. So that day, finally tracking down DeLaughter on a Little League baseball diamond, coaching his son’s team, I said, “Bobby, I know you have the gun.”

He looked flabbergasted and again denied the allegation. Finally, he said, “If your editors over there weren’t such a**holes, I would have told you all about it a long time ago.”

Well, for me, that was confirmation enough. I went back to the newspaper, called Matthew Moore and relayed DeLaughter’s quote verbatim. Okay, he said, you can use what I told you. Fortunately, I had it all on tape. But I still didn’t have DeLaughter actually saying he and Peters had the weapon. With Matthew’s information now on the record, I called DeLaughter on the phone and relayed Matthew’s tape-recorded story. DeLaughter then came clean.

My last phone call that night was to Myrlie Evers to tell her that the gun had been found. The story, co-written with Jerry Mitchell, ran the next morning. Beckwith, of course, was later convicted of the murder.

[Read more →]

On our developing topic of Bobby DeLaughter and the Beckwith Gun, I’ve had a story that smells significant from someone whose name would be familiar and credible to Jacksonites if I had permission to share it (you’ve seen it on folo before). My source isn’t a character in this story but has just refreshed their shared memory of it with one who is (whether Jerry Mitchell could speak to it, Source doesn’t know). Anyhow, here’s the tale:

Back when the Clarion-Ledger was pushing for the reopening of the Evers case, it had two reporters on the story (one being Jerry Mitchell, of course). The other one had questioned Bobby DeLaughter about the missing gun, been told it didn’t exist, and reported accordingly. But then another source of his — a guy later found dead beside his car on Amite Street around 7 o’clock one morning, supposedly a suicide — told Reporter Two that DeLaughter himself had the gun.

When he called Bobby to confront him, Bobby confirmed it — thereby starting the cascade of events that led to Beckwith’s conviction: Ed Peters’ office never “revealed” that they’d found the gun, but once it came out that, despite his previous statements, DeLaughter had it, they had no choice but to proceed.

“I’ve always liked DeLaughter,” Source writes,

but in the back of my mind there was that moment where, it seemed to me, he did not do the right thing because the big dogs did not want him to do the right thing. Then when he got caught, he did the right thing, and in that sense, in my view, Adam Nossiter’s piece in the NYT was absolutely accurate (I know you don’t agree). The fact is, DeLaughter is a Civil Rights hero, and he is innocent of all the pending charges until proven guilty.

But there is no question in my mind that the foreshadowing of today’s events starts with that long-ago issue of the gun.

Indeed.

[Read more →]

I’ve been hoping someone would take pity on us non-Mississippi-resident foloers and tell the story (or stories) of how the Medgar Evers murder weapon — an Enfield 1917.303 rifle, according to Wikipedia — came into then-assistant district attorney Bobby DeLaughter’s possession before the 1994 trial that would finally convict Byron De La Beckwith of the 31-year-old murder. (Beckwith had been arrested about a year after the shooting, but in 1964, two juries — all-white in those days — one after the other deadlocked over finding him guilty.)

Leave it to one of our best sources to pass along fresh insight into The Gun. The tale goes like this:

When Beckwith was brought to trial in 1994, he lawyer-shopped quite a bit before he was very ably represented by Buddy Coxwell and (I think) [now MS Supreme Court Justice] Jim Kitchens. He met with numerous folks along the way. He met with three lawyers from Booneville (one of whom is now a convicted felon) to discuss their possible representation of him. I remember when this happened but checked with one of the guys to make sure I had the story straight and get permission to tell it.

Beckwith was asked about the gun and how [Bobby DeLaughter's father-in-law] Russell Moore ended up with it. His explanation was that after the second trial, there was an uproar in the courtroom with lots of chaos. Beckwith says he saw his “favorite little gun” on the clerk’s desk and simply picked it up and walked out with it. Sometime later Moore called him personally to ask for a “souvenir.” Beckwith said he took him the gun AND a pair of Japanese binoculars that he used that horrible night. When asked why Moore would have called him directly, Beckwith replied that they were old friends from the Citizens Council. So, according to Beckwith, the gun was with Moore because Beckwith himself gave it to him.

Beckwith also had the original transcript that was “missing.” He said that Hardy Lott (his attorney) sent it to him. Apparently it was last seen with a Beckwith descendant somewhere in Monroe County.

Had I not been privy to these conversations I, too, would have been suspicious of the finding of the murder weapon.

Beckwith was a little senile by that time, so who knows what was truth and what was conjecture. I know he told some tales that would make your hair stand on end.

I always thought he was a bit of a pawn – but one thing was clear. He NEVER thought he was in danger of a conviction. In fact, some folks speculate that he was himself the “tipster” who got the police on his trail.

Now, if somebody knows more about the transfer from Russell Moore to DeLaughter, we’ll be all set . . .

UPDATE: Okay, just heard from someone who refreshed my memory of the other version some of y’all told many months ago.

As described by Source (who worked for Judge Russell Moore in the early 80s), the judge was a big collector — of junk, of evidence, of whatever. When the Beckwith trials were over, he didn’t want the gun to go back to the Hinds County evidence room — where, he figured, it was sure to go missing. So he kept it himself. In his office. Everybody who knew him knew he had it. And eventually one day he took it on home.

Eventually Judge Moore wore out and got sick; when they cleaned out his office, they found a whole big trunk full of evidence he’d pack-ratted away.

And as opposed to the tarted-up movie version, in real life there was no “watershed moment” when the judge’s son-in-law suddenly discovered the weapon. Rather, Bobby DeLaughter just strolled into his in-laws’ home one day and took what he (and Ed Peters and everybody else) knew had long been in the old man’s closet . . .

[Read more →]