The Fall of the House of Zeus

by Curtis Wilkie

  Zach was meeting with his own attorneys in a conference room at the law firm when Mike Moore took him aside. “We need to talk,” Moore said. They were joined by Scruggs in Zach’s small office.

  Scruggs took a seat in an armchair by a window, looked at his son, and said, “This is the latest government offering: They’re willing to give me five years, Sid three, and one for you.” He paused. “I’m going to take it. I wish you would, too.”

  Zach was stunned. He had never expected the case to come to this. “Hell, no,” he said. “I’m not going to do it.” He rose from behind his own desk, repeated his vow, and walked out.

  Moore followed Zach from the room and led him to Scruggs’s office, where Keker was waiting. The San Francisco lawyer explained some of the details of the prosecutors’ offer and the reasons why he felt it would be best for the defendants to accept the plea bargain.

  “Look,” Keker said, “we’ve been overruled on every motion. I can destroy Tim Balducci and I can destroy Henry Lackey on cross-examinaton, but at the end of the day we’re still looking at this November the first tape.” He reminded Zach of the negative results of the mock trial in Shreveport where the “jurors” had had little sympathy for the lawyer-defendants. A real jury in Oxford would likely come down hard, too, Keker said. “Zach, they’ll look at you like a rich white boy.”

  “I’m not doing it,” Zach said.

  “You don’t want to blow up the deal, put your dad in trouble.”

  Zach scoffed at the suggestion. “There’s no way in the world they’ll refuse a deal on Dick Scruggs and hold out for me. I’m not going to do it.”

  “All right,” Keker said. He did not press Zach further.

  Zach walked back to his own office. His father was still there, sitting quietly, staring out the window. His son was overwhelmed by the poignancy of the moment. He thought the scene would stay with him the rest of his life: the sight of his father, as if he were a monarch, looking out at his kingdom and watching it disintegrate—Zeus, the king of the gods, falling.

  Father and son sat together saying nothing.

  Elsewhere, there was frantic activity. Frank Trapp was not pleased to learn that Keker had suggested a three-year sentence for his client. After thirty-five years in the trenches, with countless criminal defendants, Trapp could be stubborn and unyielding. He often exasperated prosecutors with counter-demands on behalf of his clients, and now it seemed as if Keker had spoken for Backstrom before Trapp could negotiate in earnest.

  Keker had a national reputation, but Trapp was regarded as one of the most formidable criminal defense lawyers in the state. Scruggs had wanted to hire him in 1992 when Steve Patterson and Ed Peters threatened him with indictment, but Trapp had a conflict and couldn’t accept the assignment. Fifteen years later, after Backstrom had been advised to retain Trapp, Backstrom had asked Mike Moore about the lawyer’s reputation. “You can’t do any better,” Moore had told him. For the past four months, Trapp had traveled back and forth between Jackson and Oxford to defend Backstrom.

  In the courtroom, Trapp presented an unlikely sight. While others dressed formally, he preferred a sports jacket and slacks to distinguish his client from “the suits.” His graying hair curled over his collar like shoots of dry grass that had not been mowed. His manner seemed deceptively informal. Trapp grew up in Neshoba County, the place made notorious by the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman; local residents preferred that their home be known for the Neshoba County Fair, an annual event billed as “Mississippi’s giant house party.” Though he had played football at Ole Miss, Trapp became identified around the state through his profession, which he practiced at the Jackson office of Phelps Dunbar, one of the most respected law firms in the South.

  After hearing of the 5-3-1 proposal, Trapp met with Backstrom, then went to see the prosecutors himself.

  He knew his client had been implicated in the recordings, but he told the prosecutors he was prepared, in a trial, to impeach Balducci’s grand jury testimony, concentrating on the passage where the witness claimed that he had talked with Backstrom about a $10,000 payoff to Judge Lackey when a recording of that conversation showed that he had done no such thing.

  The prosecutors offered to knock six months off Backstrom’s prison time, to reduce their recommendation to two and a half years.

  To Zach, the case against him seemed to be built on a conversation he emphatically denied he had not heard—Balducci’s mention of “sweet potatoes” in Backstrom’s office on November 1—and by the fact that he had been the only one left in the Scruggs office on the night of October 18 to accept an envelope from Balducci containing Lackey’s order. Zach handed over another envelope containing a check for $40,000 from Scruggs in exchange for an invoice from Balducci for work on a voir dire project.

  Zach had been enthusiastically planning his own defense. He would charge the government with using the recorded conversations out of context, and he was prepared to question the FBI’s failure to produce a record of a critical exchange on November 19, while Balducci was still acting as an undercover agent. Balducci had come to the Scruggs Law Firm that day—eighteen days after he had last visited, wearing a body wire—and briefly interrupted a meeting between Zach and several others. Zach had reminded Balducci of the voir dire assignment that needed to be completed quickly. There had been no mention of Judge Lackey. When Zach’s attorneys asked the FBI for a tape of that conversation, they were told none existed. The FBI explained that Balducci had not been equipped with a body wire that day; his assignment had been to lure Backstrom across the square to the little Patterson-Balducci office, rigged with listening devices designed to plunge Backstrom deeper into a conspiracy. (The plot failed—Murphy’s Law, again—because Backstrom had been out of town.)

  Zach complained, repeatedly and bitterly, that the government’s case against him had been constructed on a foundation of lies and deceit. He considered himself an unwitting victim of circumstances.

  Mike Moore buttressed the argument that Zach had not been present for the critical part of Balducci’s conversation with Backstrom. Zach had been quite vocal earlier in the FBI recording, but his voice was missing when “sweet potatoes” were mentioned. Since Zach was known to be very loquacious—a characteristic he demonstrated in his running commentary while in Backstrom’s office—Moore said it was inconceivable that Zach would have let Balducci’s cryptic message pass without making some remark himself.

  Keker reported to the prosecutors that Zach would not be a part of any agreement. To them, Keker sounded exasperated and concerned that Zach’s reluctance might upset the plea bargain. His comments pleased the prosecutors. It reflected disarray in the defense camp. In truth, the prosecutors had little patience or sympathy for Zach. They had developed a dislike for him from the day of the raid at Scruggs’s office, when the FBI reported that Scruggs’s son acted intemperately.

  The three-man prosecution team decided that Zach would not be a deal-breaker. They agreed on five years for Scruggs and two and a half years for Backstrom—with the stipulation that Backstrom cooperate with the investigation. Dawson declared of Zach, “We won’t let this jerk hold things up. We’ll try his ass by himself. We’ve got significant evidence against him, and if he’s convicted, he’ll be looking at about fifteen years.”

  By Thursday night, the cases of Dick Scruggs and Backstrom were settled, but Mike Moore was just beginning intense negotiations to try to save Zach. He felt that Norman and Sanders showed some leniency, though Dawson was holding out for a felony plea and some prison time.

  In a hushed conversation on the balcony of the law firm, Moore told Zach of his talks with the U.S. attorneys. He saw encouraging signs. “Go home, get some sleep, and pray,” Moore told his client. They would talk about it again the next day, after Scruggs and Backstrom formally entered their guilty pleas.

  On Friday morning, March 14, Zach and Backstrom gathered for the last time, as law partners and co-defendants
, at their firm on the square. The office was steeped with sorrow and melancholy. Members of the staff were weeping; Backstrom was crying, too. He embraced Zach, telling him, “I’m so sorry, but I’m going to get you out of this.”

  Zach could not bear to go with the others as they made the short walk to the federal courthouse where his father and Backstrom would commit themselves to prison sentences and give up their law licenses.

  Judge Biggers had already scheduled a hearing on another motion in their case that morning, so there were a few people on hand for what was expected to be a routine session. Bruce Newman, a photographer for The Oxford Eagle, was surprised to see Dick Scruggs walking toward the federal courthouse hand in hand with his wife.

  Diane had always been in court with Dick when he wanted her there. She had once spent weeks in a California courtroom, under happier circumstances, when he had been involved in a long civil case. So she would be with him now. But she was in a daze, moving in tandem with Dick as if by rote. She recognized some of the reporters and photographers whom she had once considered friendly. Now they seemed part of an enemy army.

  Though the late winter day was clear, it felt as though there had been an instant, stormy change in atmospherics.

  There had been no public indication of a breakthrough. The night before, Jere Hoar, a retired journalism professor, had been talking with Biggers about protocol at a Delta hunting camp when the judge said, “You’re a crime writer, aren’t you?” Hoar had written one well-received crime novel, The Hit. Without revealing the case, Biggers suggested, “There’s a hearing at ten tomorrow that you might find very interesting.”

  Hoar was waiting when Scruggs walked into the courtroom a few minutes before the appointed hour. He heard a stir. Some spectators bolted from the room to alert others. Scruggs moved inside the rail separating the general public from the counsels’ tables. He shook hands with all of the prosecutors and court officers, then went, with Backstrom, into the judge’s chambers for a few minutes. Scruggs was still smiling when he emerged, but Backstrom looked miserable.

  While they waited on the judge, Scruggs worked the crowd like a politician. He leaned toward Hoar, extended his hand, and said, “I’m Dick Scruggs.” Hoar thought: As if the whole world didn’t know.

  Scruggs somehow maintained a dapper appearance throughout his ordeal. Backstrom did not fare as well. He trembled and wept. His friend Rhea Tannehill helped prop him up as he pleaded guilty.

  Backstrom’s day was not done. As required by the plea agreement, he would be interrogated that afternoon and would submit to a lie detector test. The prosecutors anticipated that he would implicate Zach and close the circle on the last defendant.

  But through three hours of questioning, Backstrom gave them little more evidence than they already had. He said that Zach had not been in the room to hear Balducci’s remark; nor did Zach know of any conspiracy to bribe Judge Lackey. Backstrom had flight records and credit card receipts to prove that he and Zach had been in New Orleans on the day Balducci claimed to have talked with Backstrom in Oxford about the Lackey bribe. There were other instances where Backstrom was prepared to demonstrate that Balducci had lied.

  Backstrom’s attorneys, who were with him, told Moore shortly afterward that Backstrom had “exonerated Zach.”

  With new resolve, Moore and Todd Graves approached the prosecutors about dropping the case against Zach. But they were told by Dawson that Keker’s 5-3-1 proposal implied that Zach was guilty.

  When Zach heard of this kink in efforts to extricate him from the indictment he marched to the bed-and-breakfast establishment where Keker was staying. Keker told him he was appalled that the government had interpreted the 5-3-1 proposal that way, and he called Dawson to say he believed Zach was innocent. He recommended a deferred prosecution for Zach and a short suspension of his law license. A deferred prosecution effectively meant a dismissal of the charges, though the government would reserve a future right to revive the case against him. In exchange, Zach would be willing to acknowledge that he knew of unethical plans to earwig Judge Lackey.

  Dawson, already weary of the events of the past two days, said any decision was too important to be made right away. He suggested that everyone wait until the weekend passed.

  To the astonishment of the Sunday brunch crowd at the Oxford University Club, Scruggs appeared, en famille. He greeted friends as though little had happened. At one table he said that the weekend had not been devoid of good news. “At least Mississippi State lost,” he said of the upset Saturday of his alma mater’s top-ranked rival in the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament.

  Zach was there with his wife, Amy, and their two small children. To those who wished him luck, he assured them he intended to fight until vindicated.

  Despite his father’s guilty plea, Zach felt confident. When he met with Rhea Tannehill later in the day, he was further encouraged. “Everything is cool,” Tannehill told him. “Sid blew the air out of their case” when he met with the prosecutors. “Your biggest challenge is not to be cocky.”

  Zach’s mood changed Monday morning when he saw Moore talking on his cell phone with Dawson as he walked up the interior steps to Scruggs’s office. Zach was troubled by Moore’s expression, and he overheard him say, “That’s not what you told me on Friday.”

  The compromise Moore felt he had in hand Friday night had fallen apart over the weekend. “What about the deferred prosecution?” Moore asked.

  “Greenlee wouldn’t do it,” Dawson said. He encouraged Moore to persuade Zach to plead guilty. “You should be scared at how many years Judge Biggers would lay on him. He could get fifteen to twenty years.”

  The prosecutors were prepared to accept a plea on one count of misprision of a felony, an obscure charge that would accuse Zach of knowing about a crime and failing to report it. In exchange, they would recommend that he serve no time in prison.

  Zach told Moore he was not sure what “misprision of a felony” meant, and he was still unwilling to give in, especially if it meant the loss of his law license. But for the first time, he seemed less adamant.

  To ensure that Zach would not go to prison, Moore suggested to the prosecutors that they meet collectively with Judge Biggers to finalize the deal. Dawson told Moore that contact of this sort with the judge was out of the question. “You might do this in state courts, but you can’t do that with a federal judge,” he said.

  The federal prosecutors had a poor relationship with Moore. Despite his years as attorney general and district attorney, they’d never considered him one of their own. They thought him glib and naïve, and because of his friendship with Scruggs, they had suspicions about his honesty. They had pumped some of the defendants—notably Steve Patterson—with questions about the two Democratic attorneys general, Moore and Jim Hood.

  It sounded as though the prosecutors would be delighted to be able to indict Moore, too, and accounts of their interest in him were relayed to him. At one point, during a recess in a hearing in the case, Moore approached the prosecutors’ table and made a caustic remark. “Do you guys have any questions you want to ask me?”

  No one responded to Moore’s dare. Still, the prosecutors regarded him with disdain. Like his client, they thought Moore far too slick, and they considered him tarnished by an association with Dick Scruggs.

  Moore worried that Zach, left alone, would wind up with the wrath of the federal government upon him. Following another meeting with prosecutors Tuesday morning, he told his client of his concerns at a meeting that afternoon at the law office while they nibbled at orders of take-out pizza. Dick was also there, as Moore presented the argument for a guilty plea.

  Moore cited Judge Biggers’s hostility. “This judge will send you to the moon if you’re convicted,” he said. “And if it comes to that, I don’t know that I could ever practice law again.”

  Zach’s father offered his own warning about the judge. “Don’t fool around with this guy.”

  Zach felt he had been p
ut in a hotbox by his best friends. For days he had the sensation, as he described it, of “being left wounded on the beach.” His father had capitulated to the government without ensuring that his son would escape. Zach believed that his father, under stress, had lost judgment, and he blamed Keker for failing to press for Zach’s freedom. At the same time, Zach recognized that Keker was, after all, representing Dick’s interest, and not his. The situation seemed hopelessly confusing.

  Still, he resisted the advice to accept the results of the plea bargaining.

  “Dick got five,” Zach said, calling his father by his first name, as had become his practice. “Sid got two and a half. There’s no way the judge will give me more than that. I’ll take my chances with five years.”

  “If you’re convicted, it will be more than that,” Moore countered. He pointed out that a guilty plea would allow Zach to maintain his freedom.

  “Are you sure about that?” Zach asked.

  “Well, no,” Moore admitted. But he added, “Dawson says he will make a strong recommendation for probation, and the judge usually accepts his recommendations.”

  “I need to think about this,” Zach said.

  That afternoon, Zach met his wife, his parents, and Moore at Dick and Diane’s home. Up until then, the women had been supportive of Zach’s position, but now they urged him to make a deal with the prosecutors in order to escape a prison sentence.

  “Do you want your children to grow up and for ten years not know you?” his mother asked. Diane was already struggling with the realization that her husband would soon be leaving for years in prison. It was unthinkable that her son, too, would be missing from the life of their family.

  Zach said he would rather be in prison and have his children believe he had been convicted unjustly than to plead guilty.

  Amy, who was pregnant with a child to be born that fall, said it was unacceptable to think that their family could survive without him for a decade.