Legal News

Miss. Judge Indicted in ?Scruggs II? Plot; Lott?s Name Surfaces Again

By Ashby Jones

Associated Press

Mississippi judge Bobby DeLaughter leaves federal court after being arraigned in Oxford, Miss. on Thursday. (AP Photo/Oxford Eagle, Bruce Newman)

Federal prosecutors are calling it “Scruggs II.” Yesterday, the case led to its first indictment, that of Hinds County, Miss., judge Bobby DeLaughter, on fraud, corruption and witness-tampering charges. DeLaughter pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Click here for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger article; here for coverage from Yall Politics; here for coverage from the folo blog.

Judge DeLaughter, who successfully prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith, the accused murderer of civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, is accused of conspiring in a plan to improperly affect the outcome of a fee-dispute involving famed plaintiffs lawyer Dickie Scruggs. Scruggs, already serving a five-year sentence for his role in a conspiracy to bribe a different Mississippi judge (a case now known, we suspect, as “Scruggs I”), pleaded guilty earlier in the week to conspiring in the scheme.

The allegation: Scruggs, through the help of then-Sen. Trent Lott, Scruggs’s brother-in-law, promised to have DeLaughter considered for a federal judgeship in exchange for the favorable ruling.

Lott called DeLaughter, but ultimately tapped someone else for the open judgeship seat. Lott has not been charged in the case and has repeatedly denied wrongding, though his name does surface in the DeLaughter indictment.

From the indictment unsealed on Thursday:

On or about March 29, 2006, in order to exploit Judge DeLaughter’s aspirations to become a federal judge, Richard F. “Dickie” Scruggs caused his brother-in-law, then a United States Senator from Mississippi, to offer Judge DeLaughter consideration for appointment to a federal judgeship then open in the Southern District of Mississippi.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 13, 2009 (boomark / email).