Imprisoned former attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs asked a federal court last week to throw out his conviction in the judicial corruption case involving former Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter.
Scruggs’ legal argument in the motion, filed in U.S. District Court in north Mississippi, is that the U.S. Supreme Court limited the scope of so-called honest services laws, and he says that means he’s innocent of a crime to which he pleaded guilty.
The law says it’s a crime for a public official to deprive citizens of honest services while in office or to be involved in such a crime. The Supreme Court found problems with the law in the conviction of former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling. The Supreme Court ruled June 24, 2010, that prosecutors can use the law only in cases where evidence shows the defendant accepted bribes or kickbacks.
Scruggs, 65, was serving five years for conspiring to bribe another judge when he pleaded guilty to honest services fraud in the DeLaughter case in 2009. The plea deal added two years to Scruggs’ sentence.
Scruggs was charged with enticing DeLaughter to rule in his favor in a civil lawsuit by saying Scruggs’ brother-in-law, U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, would help DeLaughter get a federal judgeship.
Scruggs now says he offered DeLaughter nothing of value and only endorsed DeLaughter’s candidacy for a judgeship. Federal judges are appointed. Senators make recommendations.
“(Scruggs) did no more than endorse the candidacy. Such political speech cannot be criminalized under the First Amendment,” Scruggs said in court papers.
Scruggs’ son, Zach Scruggs, has made a similar argument about the Skilling case in hopes of getting his conviction overturned in another corruption case. That case involved $40,000 in cash paid to Lafeyette County Circuit Judge Henry Lackey for a favorable ruling in a lawsuit over legal fees from Hurricane Katrina litigation.
Zach Scruggs pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for allegedly knowing about a crime. Zach Scruggs says he only knew of an attempt to influence the judge, or earwig him, not bribery, and his conviction should be thrown out.
The judicial bribery investigation that toppled Scruggs was one of the most sweeping judicial bribery cases in Mississippi in memory and brought down some of the most powerful lawyers in the state.
Scruggs gained national prominence and earned hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1990s with a case that led to a multibillion-dollar settlement from tobacco companies. His efforts were portrayed in the 1999 film “The Insider” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.
DeLaughter was a former prosecutor who made a name for himself as an assistant district attorney in 1994 when he helped put away Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
The case was the basis for the 1996 movie “Ghosts of Mississippi,” with Alec Baldwin playing DeLaughter. DeLaughter also wrote a book about the prosecution, “Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case.”
DeLaughter, 57, was sentenced to 18 months in November 2009 after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI in the Scruggs case. He has been released
Topics USA Mississippi
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