Moved – to http://www.folo.us

It seems that no one had really noticed that the Wilson v. Scruggs case was still open and ready for action, and so the motion to recuse filed by Wilson’s lawyers may have come as a surprise to many.

“Many” here would probably include the lawyers who once represented Scruggs who are still of counsel in the case and have never done anything to withdraw from it. Many have recently filed Motions to Withdraw.

So many possible titles for this post came through my mind. “It’s been fun, guys, but we’re outta here!” and “Let my people go!” for instance. But the obvious winner comes from this sentence in Johnny Jones’s motion to withdraw as counsel for Dickie Scruggs: “Irreconcilable differences have been developed between Counsel and the Scruggs Defendants.”

Is this a divorce petition? Shouldn’t it be filed in Chancery Court? It does help us understand Jones’s take on this in his coversations with Jerry Mitchell, reported in Sunday’s paper.

NMC

“[T]he explanation of any phenomena should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.” From the wikipedia entry on Occam’s razor.

Occam’s razor is usually the best argument against conspiracy theories. An obvious example is that the rich and powerful (like everyone else) are usually going to act on their own self-interest, and so it does not require imagining a dark conspiracy of the rich and powerful when they make the similar moves out of self-interest. This does not mean there are never conspiracies of the rich and powerful, only that there needs to be some concrete evidence of such a conspiracy to imagine one.

What does it have to do with Scruggs this week? I think we now have enough public information to pretty close to fully understand the hiring of Mike Moore by Zach Scruggs:

• Moore has a long and close relationship with the Scruggs family that I am sure includes a high level of mutual trust. Moore has the kind of loyalty that leads him to do things like accompany Scruggs to his grand jury testimony in the Paul Minor case.
• The addition of more lawyers from Kansas City and Graves’s public comment about why Zach won’t plead both make clear that this is about building a legal team for trial. While Mike Moore has almost no trial experience in decades, and probably no federal criminal experience at all, he is very much a known local lawyer. I’m not fully sure how his presence in the case will come across to a jury. It’s not impossible that it will be a net benefit.
• Dickie Scruggs makes decisions with a serious eye toward public relations and also toward personal relationships. I can see him thinking he’s made the smart move here on both fronts, and that’s having an influence on Zach.
• Moore likes being in the public eye, to put it mildly, and to a degree may even believe there is no such thing as bad publicity.

And I think each of the points I just made suggests that Zach has made a decision about adding Mike Moore that has some arguable advantages. It’s a judgment call, although in my judgment not the smartest decision I’ve seen.

And so where does that leave us? “tick… tick… tick”– we are 13 days from a trial setting that Judge Biggers has done everything he can to communicate is set in stone. The order he entered yesterday says: “The amended and/or additional motions are, therefore, due to be filed no later than Wednesday, March 19, 2008.” That’s tomorrow. “This extension in no way affects any other deadlines previously set forth in this cause, including the change of plea deadline of March 17, 2008, or the trial date of March 31, 2008.”

I predict we will see additional motions (I think some but not all of the issues mentioned in court can be resolved by negotiation), which probably means a motions hearing the first of next week. I also predict that bringing Moore in will have nothing to do with what happens to the trial setting (that is, it won’t be the basis for a motion to continue that goes anywhere) and that there will have to be a big surprise development to delay the trial.

I am not willing to make a prediction about a guilty plea except these: It sure looks like no plea, but if Zach and the government do come to an arrangement, I would be shocked if the plea deadline stops a plea from being accepted. The changes in what happened over the last few days make this case so different, I think the judge would allow the deadline to be waived. Which is not to say there will be a plea.

Finally, John Keker: I see Folo’s link to Patsy Brumfeld’s report about John Keker — that he’s jumping back into the case on Zach’s side. Says who? It’s not on PACER, and I don’t see any public sign of it other than the report in the Daily Journal. Anyone else have any idea where this originated? This case has had some odd reporting that looks in retrospect like someone’s trial balloons (e.g. the Zach-gets-a-deferred-sentence report from Friday on the Clarion Ledger site). Is this another of those?

Update:  After a comment from dmwriter, I noted that on PACER, Keker does show up now as a lawyer for Zach, although I see no pleading in which they’ve made that move formally.  Then dmwriter, as also noted by him in comments below, wrote Keker directly (hey! dmwriter is a reporter!) who wrote back: ““The computer has it wrong. I have not been added, and won’t be. We are trying to fix it now.”

NMC

This is a pretty stunning development.  Former Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore has entered an appearance for Zach Scruggs in U.S. v. Scruggs.   Here is the Mike Moore entry of appearance.

It seems awful early, but strawberries from Hammond, Louisiana, hit the local produce stand this weekend.

NMC

If you can get past the overwritten riffs on being a fighter pilot, rhinoceroses-killing whatever, Jerry Mitchell’s summing up this morning is interesting for one thing: If you break it down to its parts, what’s news in it is a presentation of one particular narrative of how-Dickie-came-to-fall. Personally, for a number of reasons I’m not buying it. He describes the lawsuits Alwyn Luckey and Roberts Wilson filed against Scruggs over attorneys fees, with Johnny Jones as his source:

When two of Scruggs’ former law partners sued Scruggs, Jones became one of his defense attorneys.

“I became convinced he was a really good guy who was being shaken down by others,” Jones said. “He was a great client and did everything we asked him to do.”

I presume Jones is fully aware of the irony of his view of those lawsuits. I think the most apt narrative arc here may be Jones’s changing view of Scruggs, and not any change in Scruggs himself. To expand upon Jones’s invocation of All the King’s Men in the C/L story: while I’m not buying the Scruggs-as-Willie-Stark notion, I think it’s pretty clear Jones wants to be Jack Burden.

In 2005, Scruggs went to trial in one of those lawsuits.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerry Davis awarded Alwyn Luckey $17 million for legal fees due from the asbestos litigation.

Jones viewed the ruling as a victory since he had successfully protected Scruggs’ interests with regard to any legal fees earned from the tobacco litigation. Luckey had argued in a second lawsuit that he was entitled to a portion of the tobacco fees because asbestos earnings helped fund the tobacco litigation.

Scruggs saw the defeat as a sour loss, Jones said. “He thought he couldn’t trust the system.”

From that point forward, Scruggs changed the way he operated, Jones said. “He always had to rely on some inside connection when he didn’t need to.”

Someone should perhaps point out to Jones that this insider thing did not start in those trials, well-post-tobacco.

In an e-mail to Jones, Scruggs said that instead of listening to Jones and Oxford lawyer Jack Dunbar, he should have listened to “his friends” – lawyers Joey Langston of Booneville and Tim Balducci of New Albany.

“I didn’t get along with him after that,” Jones said. “It wasn’t about the merits anymore; it turned out to be something else besides the facts and the law.”

When in “after that” was Jones hired as counsel by Scruggs Katrina Group?  The Luckey case was tried in the summer of 2005, just weeks before Katrina.  Jones was hired by Scruggs to work as a Katrina lawyer and did so for almost a year and a half, falling out with Scruggs over attorneys fees in Dec ’06 or Jan ’07 as the money started to come in.   More than that, though, I am fundamentally not buying the notion that Scruggs became an outlaw only when he’d had a bad result in the Luckey case.   Based on what I’ve been told over and over by those with first hand knowledge, and read in primary-source documents and accounts of the asbestos and tobacco litigation, I can’t accept the pat narrative arc here.   Scruggs himself described how he turned to the “dark side” in the tobacco cases.  This was not a sudden change a decade later.

I think the narrative Mitchell presents is probably something Jones wants to believe, and I can understand why he might wish to.  But as I said, I’m not buying it.

NMC

Bruce Newman, a staff photographer at the Oxford Eagle really got the photograph yesterday, which ran in the NY Times. This is Dickie Scruggs, John Keker, and Diane Scruggs en route to court Friday.

NMC

After the two guilty pleas yesterday, there was a recess and then a motions hearing involving Zach Scruggs. I described it in a prior post. David Rossmiller obtained a copy of the transcript from the court report, so thanks to him for those who want the actual thing rather than my notes. Here is the Motions hearing transcript.

It’s of interest for those wondering: (1) Has Zach made a deal (didn’t sound like it as of 11:00 AM yesterday. BTW, I gather the Clarion Ledger took down their report to the contrary before committing it to newsprint) and (2) Will the trial happen on March 31st (sounds like it to me).

NMC