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<<Dickie Scruggs, as he is widely known, was a very successful trial lawyer who made a career out of suing the asbestos industry and later represented the State of Mississippi in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, which settled for almost $250 billion, making him a very rich man.
But on November 28, 2007, Dickie Scruggs was indicted by a federal grand jury with four others on a charge of trying to bribe Judge Lackey, a Mississippi district judge.
He eventually pled guilty, and on Friday he was sentenced. US District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. called Scruggs's conduct "reprehensible." Judge Biggers sentenced Scruggs to the maximum sentence allowed in the plea deal Scruggs reached with prosecutors. In addition to the time behind bars, Scruggs will have to pay a $250,000 fine, which shouldn't be too tough for him.
Scruggs apparently almost fainted at the sentencing hearing while being scolded by the judge. He has to report to prison by August 4.
Apparently the judge was unmoved by what appears to be a trend in high-profile prosecutions: filing a bunch of letters of support extolling the virtues of the lawyer who's being sentenced. Mel Weiss tried it, and so did Scruggs's lawyers, who filed more than 100 letters of support for Scruggs. It didn't work for Weiss, and it didn't work for Scruggs either.
So the lesson is "Bribing judges is bad and likely will land you in the clink." Presumably most lawyers don't need to learn this lesson, one would hope.
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