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

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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.

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Jerry Mitchell has a guess about what produced Dickie Scruggs’s second guilty plea last week — but since the Clarion-Ledger‘s website chops off his lede sentence (or more), who knows exactly how he phrases it. The gist, we can be sure, is that Dickie’s having no fun these days in Kentucky and hopes Arkansas might be better.

Scruggs, who earned fame and wealth from asbestos and tobacco litigation, initially heard he would be assigned to [a] dormitory-style camp along with others convicted of white-collar crimes. But instead the multimillionaire was classified as a flight risk and has been housed in general population in prison alongside those convicted of more common crimes.

Among those he has shared a cell with is a meth dealer. …

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Norman said Scruggs has begun to cooperate with authorities in a way he hasn’t before and has agreed to take a lie detector test.

If Scruggs’ information and testimony prove valuable, prosecutors have agreed to consider recommending his sentence be reduced. …

If Scruggs had gone on trial and been convicted on all of the most recent corruption charges, he could have faced up to 85 years in prison.

“The upside of going to trial was not that great, and the downside was terrible,” said Matt Steffey, professor at the Mississippi College School of Law.

“You cannot be in prison and remain in denial about what it’s like.”

Now pivot from one who knows to one who doesn’t, yet . . . and imagine:

The mayor of a state’s largest and capital city is on federal criminal trial. What would he want his attorney to tell the jury in his opening statement? That “A violation of the constitution, by itself, is not a crime”? Would he want the lawyer to talk a bit longer than “less than 10 minutes”? Well, right . . . maybe not.

Okay, what sort of witnesses would the mayor want to defend him? A woman who tells the jury she’s been an alcoholic and drug user and told the mayor about that? A man who’s brought in in orange jumpsuit and shackles, for whom the mayor has to scare-up a Jackson State pullover and sweatpants to change into before the jurors come in and he tells them he’s a crack user? Another man in federal custody who’ll testify that he bought drugs at the scene of the mayor’s alleged crime?

Would the mayor perhaps hope for a case that his lawyer needed at least 30 minutes to present?

He’d be outta luck. If you can bear it, Chris Joyner has more analysis of this train-wreck here.

As for the next big Mississippi-connected perp, guess what — or rather, who — brought Allen Stanford to grief. His lawyer.

As R. Allen Stanford assured clients last week that U.S. investigators were conducting “routine examinations” of his Texas investment advisory firm, a lawyer for his company’s Antigua affiliate was backing out.

The 58-year-old billionaire, now accused of running a “massive, ongoing fraud,” spent his final weeks at the firm struggling to soothe clients while disregarding subpoenas that sought to account for almost $8 billion of their money, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Regulators pounced days after a lawyer at the Antigua bank at the heart of the case “disaffirmed” everything he had told authorities.

“The attorney’s withdrawal is a massive red flag” that “screams fraud,” said Peter Henning, who teaches criminal and securities law at Wayne State University in Detroit. “If the SEC hadn’t turned up the heat by that point, it did then.” …

The attorney who stepped down was Thomas Sjoblom at Proskauer Rose LLP in Washington, according to a person familiar with the matter. He declined to comment. …

Well, we don’t, so what have youse to say about all this (and/or whatever)?

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Here’s what I can tell you for starters this morning:

The Republican third of California’s legislators — the 100%-anti-tax-no-matter-what posse — has finally done it: pushed the state over the cliff.

Reporting from Sacramento — With lawmakers still unable to deliver a budget after three days of intense negotiations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared to lay off 10,000 government workers and his administration said it would halt the last 275 state-funded public works projects still in operation.

The projects, which cost $3.8 billion and include upgrades to 18 bridges and roads in Los Angeles County to protect them from collapsing in earthquakes, had been allowed to continue as others were suspended because the state was running out of cash. …

Schwarzenegger had delayed sending out pink slips since Friday, hoping that lawmakers would soon approve a budget. But they failed Monday to find a third GOP vote in the state Senate to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to pass a budget — a requirement that essentially gives the minority Republicans veto power. A spokesman for Schwarzenegger said layoff notices would go out today. …

No wonder Ross Douthat and David Frum call the GOP nigh-onto hopeless, and not just in California — where I’m glad I don’t live and wish my family and friends didn’t. hilzoy and Kevin Drum have more.

Oh, and Kansas is right behind California.

Ahnuld is one of the four GOP guvs that NYT notices supporting Obama’s recovery moves (the others: Florida’s Charlie Crist, who actually got out and campaigned with him last week, Connecticut’s Jodi Rell, and Vermont’s Jim Douglas).

In Alaska, ex-Sen. Ted Stevens’ corruption conviction is providing fresh evidence to In re How Bad Was the Bush DoJ?. Yesterday Main Justice pulled the entire prosecution team — which included the head of its Public Integrity Division. Assigned as salvage crew (quite possibly for naught): the chief of Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs, deputy chief of Domestic Security, and senior trial attorney in Fraud.

Which leads me to . . . Karl Rove’s attorney telling RawStory that Rove won’t take the 5th or claim executive privilege when House Judiciary interrogates him about the US Attorney firings and Siegelman on Monday. (Repeat after me: Please, HJC showboats, turn over your questioning time to Artur Davis, who knows how to use it).

“President Barack Obama,” reports Politico, “is refusing to be rushed into his first decision to send troops into combat, an early sign he may be more independent-minded than U.S. military leaders expected. …” Retired Army Col. John Nagl, now president of the Center for a New American Security, likes the sound of that: “I’m personally hopeful that President Obama will do something that President Bush didn’t do particularly well. I think he’s thinking through the implications of committing troops, not just the first order but the second and third order effects.”

Meanwhile, realizing that this deeper-thinking POTUS is unlikely to buy into a visible attack, Israel has launched a covert war on Iran’s nuclear program, says The Telegraph. “It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime’s illicit weapons project, the experts say. The most dramatic element of the ‘decapitation’ programme is the planned assassination of top figures involved in Iran’s atomic operations. …” So much for “covert,” heh.

Those colonels we heard about the other day, Bell and Hirtle? Patrick Cockburn in The Independent:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.

“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003. …

Regard all this and tell me how not to wish we’d never heard of George W. Bush. Did you see that 65 historians C-SPAN surveyed have ranked him 36th-of-42 former Presidents? Crazy generous, if you ask me.

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One way you can tell we’ve had a change of government is that now the headline of NYT’s lede story reads Inquiry on Graft in Iraq Focuses on U.S. Officers. Only in the last month, the story says, have investigators subpoenaed personal bank records and otherwise moved in on the two colonels — one Army, one Air Force — who oversaw the $125 billion U.S. program to rebuild Iraq.

It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, and both said they had nothing to hide from investigators. Yet officials say that several criminal cases over the past few years point to widespread corruption in the operation the men helped to run. As part of the inquiry, the authorities are taking a fresh look at information given to them by Dale C. Stoffel, an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in late 2004.

Before he was shot on a road north of Baghdad, Mr. Stoffel drew a portrait worthy of a pulp crime novel: tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper sacks that were scattered in “dead drops” around the Green Zone, the nerve center of the United States government’s presence in Iraq, two senior federal officials said.

Mr. Stoffel, who gave investigators information about the office where [Army] Colonel [Anthony B.] Bell and [USAF Lt.] Colonel [Ronald W.] Hirtle worked, was deemed credible enough that he was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with officials and Mr. Stoffel’s lawyer, John H. Quinn Jr. There is no evidence that his death was related to his allegations of corruption. …

Apparently the investigation is finally moving up from midlevel people to those actually in charge of the ridiculously-ineffective but hugely-costly feint at “reconstruction” during a time when, as NYT describes it, “millions of dollars in cash, often in stacks of shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills, were dispensed from a loosely guarded safe in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces. Former American officials describe payments to local contractors from huge sums of cash dumped onto tables and stuffed into sacks as if it were Halloween candy.”

“You had no oversight, chaos and breathtaking sums of money,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who helped create the Wartime Contracting Commission, an oversight board. “And over all of that was the notion that failure was O.K. It doesn’t get any better for criminals than that set of circumstances.”

In one case of graft from that period, Maj. John L. Cockerham of the Army pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $10 million in bribes as a contracting officer for the Iraq war and other military efforts from 2004 to 2007, when he was arrested. Major Cockerham’s wife has also pleaded guilty, as have several other contracting officers.

In Major Cockerham’s private notebooks, Colonel Bell is identified as a possible recipient of an enormous bribe as recently as 2006, the two senior federal officials said. …

Finally we’ll hear more about Maj. Cockerham, the suicides (if that’s what they were) of Col. Ted Westhusing and Maj. Gloria Davis, and probably other names from the coverage I was foloing just before and after taking this blog public in early fall 2007.

For more, see BuckNakedPolitics‘s take on why the investigation needs to focus even higher. After all, thanks to BushCo’s and the Republican-led Congress’s “fiscal discipline,” Iraq and Afghanistan will by 2017 have cost us what the CBO projects to be $2.4 trillion.

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Though we mostly blawg Mississippi here, we’ve also watched enough cases from Louisiana to learn that (in Juanita Jean’s phrase) triple-z crazzzy stuff goes on in that state’s courts too. Two vivid examples are The Adventures of James Perdigao and the famous “Road Home” litigation (the latter in slow progress in the Eastern District of Louisiana under U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr., featuring such familiar lawyer-names as Calvin Fayard and Charles Foti).

Well now, yesterday morning we heard from a new commenter named Ashton R. O’Dwyer, Jr., whose hair was pretty much on fire here and here, demanding our attention to E.D.La.’s Civil Action No. 08-4728 — which turns out to be his allegation of corruption in the “Victims of KATRINA” litigation.

Having now taken a look at that complaint, what I can say is “Blimey — ANOTHER one!”

In the 29-page (RICO) Complaint he filed on October 23, 2008, O’Dwyer makes himself the name plaintiff, he needs a 47-page Appendix to list all his client/co-plaintiffs, and his defendants include Judge Duval (who took senior status in mid-December, by the way) and former Louisiana Attorney General Foti — both sued individually — plus Calvin Fayard and seven other New Orleans lawyers sued both individually and with their firms. I’d tell you all about it except that nearly a year ago, commenter Not At All Surprised prospectively saved me the trouble:

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The Eagle’s webmaster has finally put up the Friday edition. I was hoping for a look at Tim Balducci but instead we get this photo that makes me wonder about the barber schools in North Mississippi (if any). Anyhow, here you go . . .

Former Mississippi state auditor Steve Patterson (right) with attorney Hiram Eastland as he enters U.S. District Court for sentencing this morning. Patterson appeared light-hearted before being sentenced, asking the photographers taking his photo: “Where were you when I was running for office?” Photo by Bruce Newman.

2/13/09 – Last two judicial bribery defendants sentenced
Alyssa Schnugg
Staff Writer

The last two defendants in what’s been branded the Scruggs I judicial bribery case were sentenced to spend 24 months in federal prison for their roles in the scheme to bribe a circuit court judge.

Timothy Balducci and Steven Patterson both appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Neal B. Biggers this morning at the Federal Courthouse in Oxford.

Both men pleaded guilty a year ago to a charge of conspiring with Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, his son and attorney Zach Scruggs and his law partner Sidney Backstrom to bribe Circuit Court Judge Henry Lackey with $40,000 for a favorable ruling in a lawsuit against the elder Scruggs involving legal fees in Hurricane Katrina related litigation.

During Balducci’s sentencing hearing, U.S. Assistant Attorney Bob Norman told the judge that his department had never seen such “complete cooperation” from another defendant. He said Balducci’s help has opened the doors to other investigations of corruption and that the Scruggs case got as far as it did because of Balducci’s assistance.

“His cooperation was immediate,” Norman said. “He’s doing the best he knows how to do to right the wrong he has done.”

Biggers agreed but reminded Balducci he was the “bag man” in the case.

“You carried the money,” he said. “You talked the judge into going along with what you wanted to do.”

Balducci told Biggers and the court that he was “profoundly sorry” for what he had done.

“All I can do now is try to make things as rights as I can,” Balducci said.

Norman also reported that Patterson has cooperated with the government, albeit to a lesser degree than Balducci.

Patterson was called a “minor” participant in the case, although he received the same sentence as Balducci.

Before he was sentenced, Patterson said he was embarrassed and humiliated.

“If God gave me a choice to live carefree in paradise the rest of my life, or to choose to go back two years ago and change my actions, I would not hesitate to enlist to do the latter,” he told Biggers.

Both men will report to prison on March 25. The government asked for the later reporting dates because their testimony may be needed when the grand jury meets in the March.

The saga began on Nov. 27, 2007, when FBI agents raided Scruggs’ office on the Square. The next day, the five men were indicted.

On Dec. 5, 2007, the day of his arraignment, Balducci pleaded guilty to the bribery charge.

It was later learned that Balducci had been working with the government in building its case against Scruggs and the others.

But it was also Balducci who got the ball rolling. In trying to gain favor with Scruggs, during a meeting with the other defendants in March 2006, he told the famous trial attorney that he could use his friendship to corruptly influence the judge to find in favor of Scruggs in the lawsuit Jones v. Scruggs.

After Balducci approached Lackey and suggested that if Lackey would find in favor of Scruggs, he would give Lackey a place in his law firm after Lackey retired. Appalled, Lackey told the FBI about the conversation. For six months, Lackey allowed his office and telephone to be tapped. In September 2006, in another meeting with Balducci, the subject of money came up and Balducci offered Lackey $40,000. It was later discovered Scruggs was providing the funds.

Balducci was approached by the FBI in November 2007 and he began cooperating with the government and wore a wire tap himself on the day the money was given to Lackey.

Scruggs was sentenced in June to spend five years in a federal prison in Kentucky. His son is serving a 14-month sentence in Forrest City, Ark., and Backstrom is serving 28 months in Forrest City.

Earlier this week, Scruggs was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a bribery case involving Hinds Circuit Court Judge Bobby DeLaughter, which came to light during the Lackey case and through testimony of Balducci. The sentence will run concurrent with his original five-year sentence.

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Lest we forget that Trent Lott isn’t the only long-entrenched U.S. Senator (R-MS) who’s too close to — maybe even in — trouble, duckweedpond is continuing to help me monitor the Texas blogger AntiCorruptionRepublican for Thad Cochran-related developments. And he has some.

Remember that on January 30, Jack Abramoff’s former subordinate Todd Boulanger copped a plea and announced his full cooperation with investigators looking into, among many things, Team Abramoff’s dealings with Team Cochran. And the main “bridge” between them is Thad’s former aide Ann Copland (who once email-heckled Boulanger “Ackkk. Only beer and no Hebrew National hot dogs” from the luxury skybox at an Orioles game to which he was treating her and her posse; he hopped to please her because she was “more valuable to us than a rank-and-file house member”).

Well, a couple of days ago the AP’s Ben Evans looked into Abramoff-Boulanger-Copland-Cochran too, in THE INFLUENCE GAME: Scandal hits close to senator. One tidbit there particularly snags ACR’s eye:

Last month, Copland left the state job and moved back to Washington, telling associates that she needed to focus on the investigation. She had kept her house outside the capital, in Fairfax, Va.

Hmmm, says ACR, let’s review the timeline:

March 2008
Ms. Copland accepts a $90,000 a year job with Mississippi Public Broadcasting. For two months, she also draws her $140,000 a year Senate salary. While many Americans hold two jobs simultaneously, one of Ms. Copland’s jobs was in Mississippi and the other was in Washington, DC.

May 7, 2008
Ms. Copland separates from her Senate employment.

January 2009
Ms. Copland quits her job at Mississippi Public Broadcasting and returns to Fairfax to “focus on the investigation”.

Meaning, perhaps, to minimize her prison-exposure by cooperating? The Ann Coplands of the world don’t leave the online trails their bosses do, so I’m afraid this is the clearest photo of her I’ve found:

Cochran aide Ann Copland addressing a languages/international studies group’s 2002 Legislative Day

But even this fuzzy view suggests that she isn’t the sort of lady who’d do well in an orange jumpsuit. “Ms. Copland,” recalls ACR,

only held the Mississippi Public Broadcasting job for eight months, excluding the time she held two jobs. Meanwhile, we know that she and her husband kept their Fairfax, Va. home. Also, Ms. Copland’s husband has been a public middle school teacher in suburban Washington this entire time. Ms. Copland has a high school age son … I wonder where he went to school this past fall.

Something doesn’t add up to me. Maybe Ms. Copland is cooperating after all. But I suspect she never intended to hold that Mississippi Public Broadcasting job for long.

“I have no clue what is going on here,” admits ACR. Nor do I, but maybe the FBI agents to whom Todd Boulanger is and Ann Copland may be blabbing do . . .

UPDATE: Oop, par’n — I somehow missed this photo from TPMMuckraker:

TPMM quotes another bit from Evans’ story:

For example, when Copland asked Boulanger for the suite at the Orioles game in 2003, he responded in part by asking whether a Choctaw provision the firm no longer wanted had been removed from an appropriations bill.

Copland assured him it had, and the final version of the bill contained an explicit statement that the provision “is no longer necessary.”

That may not apply to orange jumpsuits in Copland’s size.

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Jerry Mitchell tracks the change in Dickie Scruggs:

AP – Rogelio M. Solis

“When Scruggs was sentenced on the first corruption charge on June 27, he appeared badly shaken, at one point needing help sitting down, in response to getting a five-year sentence. This time a shackled Scruggs calmly accepted his fate.” And after court, he changed out of his nice suit into something more uncomfortable.

Bruce Newman – Oxford Eagle

Elsewhere, Jerry predicts that Dickie isn’t the only one in for change:

That’s because Dickie Scruggs could become a key witness in future corruption cases. … Scruggs originally was charged with the wrongdoing in a still-sealed indictment, and prosecutors said Tuesday that others are named in that indictment. … Scruggs’ cooperation could lead from the legal world into Mississippi’s political world.

Into Mississippi’s political world? Where feed such creatures as Trent Lott, Mike Moore, and Jim Hood?

“The system needs purging,” Bob Wilson’s lawyer Charlie Merkel told Jerry. “I would hope any leads developed through Scruggs’ cooperation that implicate other public officials or others who tried to influence public officials will be followed up and prosecuted to the fullest.”

Starting with whom? Jerry focuses on P.L. Blake, “the man who bizarrely earned $50 million from the state’s tobacco settlement by clipping newspapers and assessing political activity for Scruggs, who championed that settlement. …” Dickie has had and will continue to have much to explain about P.L. and his errands, no doubt.

Because of his continuing cooperation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Norman asked that Scruggs be moved from the federal prison in Ashland, Ky., to one much closer so that prosecutors can talk more readily to him. Scruggs’ lead counsel, John Keker of San Francisco, asked U.S. District Judge Glen Davidson to recommend the prison in Forrest City, Ark., because of its proximity.

Under the plea bargain, prosecutors have promised Scruggs immunity in exchange for the incriminating information he divulges. Prosecutors also have promised not to have Scruggs turn over any other money.

Forrest City’s prison camp, you’ll recall, counts Zach Scruggs and Sid Backstrom among its inmates. Maybe the three of them can help refresh each other’s memories . . . say, of jokes about filing briefs on cocktail napkins before one of the smaller fish in this net. Of him, Sid Salter writes,

The questions are rather obvious: Was Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter the innocent target of a judicial bribe like Lafayette County Circuit Judge Henry Lackey? Or was he somehow a player in a backroom scheme to protect Dickie Scruggs’ money? …

While DeLaughter hasn’t been charged with anything, the parade of plea bargains and subsequent cooperating witnesses can’t bode well for the Hinds County jurist.

Player or pawn? DeLaughter’s judicial career now depends on the answer to that key question.

I rather doubt that, don’t you? For a year now, Hinds County has seen the name “Bobby DeLaughter” only in company with “Ed Peters,” “Dickie Scruggs,” “Trent Lott.” For him, the ch-ch-ch-change has already come.

Now to see who else risks walking with a clank . . .

UPDATE: Patsy Brumfield just filed U.S. ATTORNEY: EXPECT ‘SCRUGGS II’ INDICTMENT SOON:

Answers may be public by the end of this week about whether anyone else will be indicted in the judicial bribery scandal named “Scruggs II.” …

Specifically, the shadow falls on scheme participants as described Tuesday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Norman: former New Albany attorney Timothy Balducci and former state Auditor Steven Patterson, plus DeLaughter, former Hinds District Attorney Ed Peters and former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. …

Coincidentally, Balducci and Patterson will be sentenced Friday for their guilty pleas in “Scruggs I,” the conspiracy to bribe Circuit Judge Henry Lackey of Calhoun City. …

At Norman’s request, Davidson also dismissed the indictment in this case, but only for Scruggs – clearly indicating at least one other person is named in the sealed document.

Details of the indictment will be revealed “very shortly,” U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee said at a news conference outside the Aberdeen federal courthouse.

UPDATE II: From a second Brumfield story:

… Although Scruggs entered the downtown courthouse wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, he wore a business suit and tie for the afternoon hearing. He also wore metal shackles.

But he appeared more physically fit than at his June sentencing, and he smiled broadly when he saw his wife, Diane, in the courtroom.

Also in the courtroom with media and the curious was W. Roberts Wilson Jr. and his family, who have attended many of the proceedings related to Scruggs.

Davidson declined to order Scruggs to make restitution in this case, saying Wilson’s civil lawsuit seeks to settle that score.

Outside, Wilson’s attorney, Charlie Merkel of Clarksdale, predicted Scruggs’ plea will move their civil case along.

“The question about whether or not a bribe took place has been laid to rest,” he said.

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The mail fraud act was when Scruggs caused to have Langston and Balducci mail in an entry of appearance!

This is written at a break as the judge considers what he is going to do about sentence.

Under the plea agreement, Judge Davidson was asked to impose sentence today.

Some details:

• There was a quite full courtroom– Roberts Wilson and his family (he was the plaintiff in Wilson v. Scruggs, the case in which Scruggs and Langston have now pleaded guilty to influencing Judge DeLaughter), his lawyers (Bill Kirksey, Vicki Slater, Charlie Merkel, Cynthia Mitchell), Alan Perry (who is the defense lawyer in Eaton v. Frisby), Cal Mayo (represented Scruggs in the Jones case after the defense group split), Curtis Wilkie, John Hailman, Alan Lange, Sandra Knispel, Alyssa Schnugg, Jerry Mitchell, Paul Quinn, etc., etc.).
• Scruggs local counsel is now Mike Watts, a law partner of Jack Dunbar, who represented Scruggs early in the Wilson case (before Langston came in to bring in Ed Peters). John Keker and Jan Little were also there representing Scruggs.
• Jim Greenlee (US Attorney), and from that office Tom Dawson (in from retirement), Bob Norman, John Alexander, and Chad Lamar, along with FBI Agent Dulaney were there. Bob Norman acted for the Government.
• Scruggs was in a dark suit but in leg irons.
• The case being about mail fraud– denial of fair and honest services– means that the government won’t have to prove bribery– that the judge got something.
• The timeline on the scheme was Summer of 2005 until October of 2007.
• There will be no restitution– Scruggs and the Government agreed to let the civil case sort that out.
• There were several mentions of Scruggs getting his brother in law, a US Senator, to get DeLaughter considered for a position of a federal judge.  The corruption was that and the secret use of Peters who was known to have influence over DeLaughter.
• He gets use immunity for anything he tells the government, and the government will consider a Rule 35 motion to reduce the sentence if he testifies as a witness.

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