Legal News

Fun With Wiretaps, Courtesy of L?Affaire Scruggs

By Ashby Jones

We’ve finally gotten through the voluminous paperwork filed in the Dickie Scruggs case Monday night (seven defense motions, hundreds of pages of exhibits), and boy was it worth it. After all, as, ahem, frequent Law Blog commentors Jimmy McNulty, Kima Greggs and Lester Freamon know, there’s nothing more thrilling than wiretap evidence. Even transcripts of wiretapped phone conversations make for better entertainment than most prime-time television.

For some great insight into the flurry of motions, check out Roger Parloff’s post on Legal Pad today. Parloff, among much else, explains why he thinks the defense isn’t using the word “entrapment” though that’s essentially what they’re alleging. Writes Parloff, “If a defendant mounts a formal entrapment defense, he must prove that, first, the government induced him to commit the crime and, second, that he had no predisposition to committing it.” Good stuff.

Now, for a little fun, let us turn to Exhibit 36 (which starts on page 40 of this pdf), a transcription of a conversation alleged to have taken place on Oct. 11 of last year between Tim Balducci and Mississsippi Judge Henry Lackey. Again, Balducci has since agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to bribe Judge Lackey, but at the time, according to the transcript, the two were still working through the details of the bribe itself:

Henry Lackey: Hello?

TB: Naw, that’s fine. He was just asking me uh, uh, about it you know it . . .

“Sweet potatoes?” It’s been said that the Scruggs case reads like something ripped from Grisham, but this exchange reads like something out of the Dukes of Hazzard!

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 13, 2008 (boomark / email).