Much has happened in the Dickie Scruggs landscape since I last blogged on this topic last year, not the least of which is the changing world in the blogosphere: Tom Freeland, formerly of folo, now has his own blog here and after a lengthy hiatus, David Rossmiller of insurancecoverageblog.com, has now appeared back on the scene.
At any rate, here’s the latest in the Scruggs II investigation in the Northern District of Mississippi,: Bobby Delaughter, a Hinds County, Mississippi Circuit Court Judge was indicted, along with Dickie Scruggs, in January of this year in a mail fraud scheme related to the Wilson v. Scruggs case pending in front of him. The indictment, quite frankly, describes some pretty damning over acts:
- That Judge 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;
- That Judge Delaughter secretly provided the Scruggs legal team with an ex parte advance copy of a court order in the Wilson case by electronically mailing the same to Ed Peters, an attorney who had not made an appearance in the case, but who ultimately was paid$1,000,000 for the services rendered for his ex parte contacts with Judge Delaughter;
- That from August 2005 to August 2006 Peters had a number of ex parte meetings with Judge Delaughter designed to influence the judge to shade his ruling in favor of Scruggs;
- And, that during that same time frame Judge Delaughter secretly communicated with the Scruggs legal team through Peters.
Now, last week, Delaughter’s attorneys filed a couple of motions to dismiss, the most notable of which was the motion to dismiss the honest services mail fraud counts, alleging that: 1) the government failed to allege a state law violation as required by the Brumley Fifth Circuit precedent, 2) the government failed to allege bribery or material nondisclosure (this borders on the frivolous in light of the factual allegation a Judge was previewing rulings via email to a non-party attorney), 3) the mailings were required by state law, and 4) the honest services statute is void for vagueness as applied.
Interestingly, Delaugher’s counsel was the same counsel in the Sorich case, a political patronage case out of Chicago, in which Justice Scalia recently issued a stinging rebuke to the Supreme Court for failing to take cert. A copy of Sorich’s motion is dismiss is here, and a link to a Chicago Tribune article about the courtroom flair of Mr. Durkin can be found here. My take, however, is that this is a reasonably simple case and that looking at the four corners of the indictment, it does allege a crime, and quite frankly, a crime that goes to the heart of having a fair and impartial judiciary.
Here Judge Delaughter, apparently for nearly a year, was in frequent contact with an attorney, Peters, who had not filed an appearance in the case, but who was being paid $1 million by Scruggs and his counsel in the Wilson civil litigation. All the while, Judge Delaughter was supplying that attorney with previews of rulings, even emailing one order to Peters. I mean, seriously, under those facts, who can legitimately argue that the judicial process in Hinds County Mississippi was not completely bastardized.
The only part of this motion to dismiss that might have some legs is whether the mailings were compelled by law, and, therefore, under binding precedent, they can not form the jurisdictional basis of the mailings. My guess - the prosecution will supersede to cure that defect.
