The Fall of the House of Zeus (55 page)

No less than six new academic centers had been built, and a long-sought chapter of Phi Beta Kappa had been established at Ole Miss. It was a different campus from the one Khayat had inherited.

Scruggs could no longer be counted on for gifts to the school, but the new law school center he had helped develop was nearing completion. It would be named for Robert Khayat.

    
Wilson v. Scruggs
, thought finished with Judge DeLaughter’s declaration in 2006, was reopened in 2009 and lurched into its fifteenth year under a new heading: joining Scruggs on the list of defendants were Ed Peters, Steve Patterson, Tim Balducci, Zach Scruggs, and various “John Does.”

Wilson finally settled with Scruggs for an undisclosed amount in the fall of that year. A few months later, Wilson purchased the office suite that had housed the Scruggs firm on Oxford’s square. The Scruggs family would never have sold him the property—which had been on the market for a year—so Wilson used a third-party straw to complete the deal.

Meanwhile, Johnny Jones obtained out-of-court settlements from some of the partners in the Scruggs Katrina Group in connection with his lawsuit, including Dick Scruggs. He continued to pursue the case
against his personal bête noire in the group, Don Barrett, but Barrett refused to consider any measure of compromise.

    
In 2009, Grady Tollison presided over a spring convention of the southeastern region of the American Board of Trial Advocates at the grand old Peabody Hotel in Memphis. The program he arranged was dominated by two sessions dealing with professional ethics. Both panels were composed of only Tollison, Johnny Jones, and Charlie Merkel.

The title of their discussion: “Icarus, the Rise and Fall of Dickie Scruggs; Or, a Lesson in Hubris.”

A smaller number of lawyers than usual chose to attend.

    
In his most extensive comment about the case, U.S. attorney Jim Greenlee also called upon the words of ancient Greeks in a private speech about the Scruggs case at a litigation conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

He quoted from Plato’s
Republic:
“What shall he profit, if his injustice be undetected and unpunished? He who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized; the gentler element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom …”

Before he reached that lofty passage, Greenlee spoke of the painful aspects of the Scruggs case. Personal relationships are interwoven in a state like Mississippi, and he noted several associations he had with those he had investigated. He and Zach had served together on Sigma Nu committees; his nephews had been fraternity brothers with young Scruggs. He and the Backstroms had attended the same church; Balducci, too, before he moved from Oxford. Trent Lott had helped him to become U.S. attorney. He and Langston had attended law school at the same time. Greenlee’s children were friends of Patterson’s children. The relationships, he said, are “indicative of a very small bar in a small district and in a small state that is known for its hospitality, and in a bar where collegiality is practiced.”

The healthy balance in the legal community had been threatened, Greenlee said. “Because of the wealth and power and connections of Dickie Scruggs and the other defendants, they demonstrated tremendous influence over others in the state.”

Their interests were thwarted, Greenlee said, by an undercover operation so tightly held that virtually no one knew about it. The timing
of Lott’s resignation from the Senate was coincidental, he said, for there was no way for the senator to have known about the investigation of his brother-in-law.

Turning to the case of Scruggs’s son. Greenlee said, “There has been hushed criticism of our office for prosecuting such a young attorney. Zach, to this day, will probably tell you that he is not guilty, that he did not know of a planned payment to Judge Lackey. Of course, we had evidence otherwise.”

In closing, the U.S. attorney described a country judge as the real hero of the Scruggs story. “The tide was turned because of the courageous Henry Lackey, a frail man liked by all, an elected public official who said ‘enough is enough,’ who risked his life and his position. He has done more than any other I know to halt the tidal wave of attempts to corruptly influence our judges.”

    
Back home, Judge Lackey continued to be honored. When a former federal prosecutor was sworn in as a state appellate judge in ceremonies in Oxford, Lackey was asked to deliver welcoming remarks on a program that included Senator Thad Cochran and several federal judges.

At the reception afterward, Lackey could be seen chatting with his friend, former insurance commissioner George Dale.

    Though Greenlee, a Republican appointee, was not quickly replaced by the Democratic administration of President Obama, there was turnover in his office. Tom Dawson retired. David Sanders departed to become a U.S. magistrate. John Hailman, who left shortly after setting the Scruggs investigation in motion, devoted much of his time to completing a book about wine and a memoir of his experiences as a prosecutor.

The remains of the Scruggs case—embodied in the prosecution of Judge Bobby DeLaughter—was entrusted to the last member of the team that conducted the investigation, Bob Norman.

    
In court elsewhere, a federal district judge from Florida, Roger Vinson, dismissed the criminal contempt case against Scruggs initiated by the judge in Alabama, William Acker.

Undeterred, Judge Acker ordered Scruggs and the Rigsby sisters, who had turned over State Farm documents to Scruggs, to pay $65,000 in attorney fees to the Rigsbys’ former employer. The elderly Acker
was still angry. In a sharp attack, he described Scruggs as “too cute by half,” referred to Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood as a “so-called law enforcement officer,” and said that Scruggs and the Rigsbys were as “joined at the hip as any set of Siamese twins.”

In July 2009, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Acker’s order on the grounds that the judge had no jurisdiction in the case. The appellate panel wrote, “Finally, in the interests of fairness to both the district court [Acker] and Scruggs we shall exercise our supervisory powers to direct that all remaining issues pertaining to Scruggs in the Renfroe case should be assigned to a different district court judge.”

    As he began his third year in prison, Paul Minor continued to come into the news.
His case had been highlighted in a congressional report in 2008 concerning “selective prosecutions” by U.S. attorneys appointed by President George W. Bush. Noting that Minor had been a “major contributor” to the Democratic Party, the report suggested that “politics may have influenced” his prosecution.

The report was issued by the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Representative John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan, is a Democrat. It also touched on Scruggs.

“While Mr. Minor was indicted by U.S. Attorney Lampton for making or guaranteeing loans to Mississippi judges, including Justice Diaz, another prominent Mississippi trial lawyer alleged to have engaged in virtually the same conduct, Richard Scruggs, was not. Mr. Scruggs, however, has been reported to have supported Republican candidates in other elections and is the brother-in-law of Senator Trent Lott. Indeed, Senator Lott himself acknowledged speaking to prosecutors about the case, stating that Mr. Scruggs had nothing to worry about regarding an investigation of connections between Mississippi judges and lawyers …”

Minor filed another lengthy appeal of his conviction, and part of his sentence was vacated by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a ruling that brought some joy to Minor shortly before Christmas 2009.

But earlier in the year, Sylvia Minor, his wife of forty-one years, died after a long struggle with cancer. Minor was not allowed to visit her in her last days or to attend her funeral.

    
Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to former president Bush, was interviewed by the staff of the House Judiciary Committee in the summer, six months after Bush left office. Asked about the appointment
of Dunn Lampton as U.S. attorney in Mississippi’s Southern District, Rove said he was the product of a routine process involving the state’s two Republican senators. “One of them, in particular, has strong feelings about anything that is connected with southern Mississippi,” he said. “I speak of former Senator Lott.”

Rove said he had no knowledge of the prosecution of Paul Minor. The case took place in “a distant part of the country,” he said. “It was not the policy of the White House to directly or indirectly attempt to influence any specific case.”

But Rove volunteered that the Scruggs case “makes for entertaining reading.”

    
Scruggs asked to serve his time at a federal prison in Pensacola, Florida, where Minor was being held. Not far from his and Diane’s former home in Pascagoula, the location would be convenient for visits. His request was denied on the grounds that he represented a “flight risk.” The prison facility was adjacent to a naval air station where he had once flown, and it was theorized that he could somehow commandeer a plane and fly away.

He was sent, instead, to a correctional facility in Ashland, Kentucky, a hard day’s drive for his friends and family members in Oxford. In the first week of his imprisonment, Scruggs suffered a seizure believed to be related to his withdrawal from the drugs on which he had grown dependent. He was hospitalized for several days. After recovering, he was given a job as a janitor; his first cellmate was a young man serving twenty years for operating a meth lab.

Although the Kentucky prison was far away, Diane made the trip to visit her husband almost every weekend.

Zeus Scruggs had fallen to unimaginable depths, but he kept the “stiff upper lip” so prized in the military. And a sense of humor.
Two months into his sentence, he wrote a friend, “I am now teaching a phase of the GED course work. I just knew that someone would spot my genius by how I pushed that mop.”

Later, he told of how he had been subjected to “tobacco’s curse” years after his assault on the industry. “
I got promoted,” he wrote. “I no longer mop the hall every day. Now I only have to clean the guards’ lounge and bathrooms on weekends. You cannot imagine how much spit tobacco can fit into one trash can. These good old boys use empty pop bottles for cuspidors. After I carry this trash to a bin, it is culled by a group of inmates who reprocess this slimy stuff in a microwave and
smoke it! I kid you not. These guys even get mad at me when there’s not enough. Tobacco’s curse is getting even with me.”

    Early in 2009, the federal prosecutors made another run at him. Threatened with indictment in connection with Senator Lott’s call to Judge DeLaughter and the judge’s favorable ruling in the Wilson case, Scruggs faced the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison if convicted of another bribery.
His first instinct—to fight the charge—gave way to a decision to plead guilty in the case prosecutors called Scruggs II.

He did so in the little North Mississippi town of Aberdeen before U.S. District Judge Glen Davidson. Although Roberts Wilson and Charlie Merkel were again present in the courtroom, the ambience seemed less ominous than his dates in the federal building in Oxford. Scruggs was allowed to wear a suit, but he moved toward the bench in a halting pace, still shackled by leg irons.

He told Judge Davidson that he had promised Judge Biggers “to be a better man” when he accepted his sentence for Scruggs I. “I hope what I am doing today is a major step toward redeeming that pledge.”

By this time, Bob Norman was in charge of the prosecution, and he told the judge that Scruggs had already begun talking. “His cooperation has opened several doors we need to investigate.”

The judge accepted Scruggs’s plea and added another two and a half years to his sentence. He also delivered a mild lecture about Scruggs’s “sad” thirst for money. Instead of citing the wisdom of ancient Greeks, Davidson invoked Scottish philosopher William Barclay: “The Romans had a proverb that money is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become.”

When the session was finished, Scruggs was taken to another room, where he was stripped of his business suit. Photographers were waiting when the prisoner, manacled and wearing a vivid orange jump suit, was led from the building.

    
While he was being shuttled from one location to another by the Bureau of Prisons, Scruggs once found himself briefly in the company of two other prisoners, Steve Patterson and Joey Langston. He had a conversation with Patterson, but refused to speak to Langston.

    
The prosecutors felt confident that Scruggs’s testimony would finally lead them to P. L. Blake. At last, they believed, they had in their
crosshairs the most intriguing figure in the case, the veteran of the old Mississippi organization.

In the spring of 2009, Scruggs was brought to the Lafayette County Jail in Oxford—where he came within sight of his son but was unable to speak with him—to appear before a federal grand jury. But his testimony failed to win an immediate indictment of his old associate. In fact, the prosecutors were disturbed over the paucity of Scruggs’s remarks. His session with the grand jury was so unproductive that it lasted only fifteen minutes.

He was kept in a windowless cell in Oxford for two months as talks continued between prosecutors and his attorneys.

One of the most remarkable statements in their dialogue came from Bob Norman. It occurred in a conference room at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in late March, almost exactly two years after Tim Balducci had approached Judge Lackey. Representing the government were Norman, his associate Chad Lamar, and Bill Delaney. Scruggs was accompanied by two lawyers from John Keker’s office, Jan Little and Brook Dooley.

At the beginning of the conversation, Norman tried to establish a convivial mood by remarking that the federal government had come to realize that none of the members of the Scruggs Law Firm had originally set out to bribe Judge Lackey.