Miscellaneous

Scruggs: I'm the real victim here

By Walter Olson, Ted Frank, and David Nieporent

The beleaguered tort tycoon is now seeking to have the federal indictment dismissed on grounds of "outrageous government misconduct". Roger Parloff at Fortune Legal Pad explains how Scruggs's attorneys are evoking the atmospherics of an entrapment defense without actually going quite so far as to assert that defense, which would mean (among other things) opening the door for prosecutors to introduce evidence of other similar but uncharged bad acts by Scruggs (Feb. 12). See also White Collar Crime Prof and NMC at Folo. And the Scruggs camp's motions to suppress wiretap evidence has resulted in the release of a slew of transcripts of taped conversations among the principals, often sliced and excerpted in nonobvious ways, highlights of which appear at Folo here ("you need it pretty soon?"), here (Tim Balducci: "you always gotta have a slush fund" and "This ain't my first rodeo with Scruggs"), here (P.L. Blake told by Patterson of "pretty good problem that I had solved") and here (appearing to omit Balducci's famous "bodies buried" line). For those sorting out Balducci's colorful figures of speech relating to food, by the way, his reference to "bushels of sweet potatoes" that he needs to get "where I can get em . . . uh . . . over to him" is explained at the WSJ law blog here, while his expressed wish to "lay the corn on the ground" for Judge Lackey is here at Folo.

Full post as published by Overlawyered on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).