The Fall of the House of Zeus

by Curtis Wilkie

  The request produced 127 letters in support of Backstrom.

  Zach’s Sigma Nu brothers rallied behind him on the fraternity’s email network. But when critical bloggers obtained a copy of the message and gave it wider circulation, with sarcastic comment, the impact of the Sigma Nu effort was diminished. Seventy-one letters were written on Zach’s behalf.

  Dick Scruggs’s case attracted 248 letters to Judge Biggers. Though a couple called for a severe sentence, virtually all of the correspondence noted Scruggs’s long record of generosity and asked the judge to take that into consideration.

  There were handwritten notes by aging residents of Pascagoula who remembered Scruggs for his kindnesses and letters from influential Mississippians such as former governor William Winter, who wrote:

  “I know of the generous financial support which he gave to many worth while causes which benefited his community and our state. I always found him to be a highly compassionate and engaged citizen leader who had a genuine interest in the well-being of his fellow citizens.”

  The childhood friend in Brookhaven whom Scruggs had bailed out of a $90,000 debt sent a letter describing how Scruggs had hired a law firm to negotiate a settlement on the credit card demands and then paid off the settlement himself.

  Another wrote of how Scruggs had been a major donor for the Piney Woods School, one of the few institutions for troubled African American youngsters in the country.

  Michael Mann, the director of The Insider, wrote from Hollywood that he knew Scruggs as “a man of rare character, humanity, and I believe a positivism.”

  But the letter that generated the most interest came from Scruggs’s old friend Robert Khayat. Writing on the university’s letterhead stationery, Khayat cited Scruggs’s “compassion and generosity” and ended with a proposal:

  “It is my belief that any time he spends being incarcerated is an absolute waste of a great deal of talent and ability. He has much to offer society and is a public-spirited person. Furthermore, it would appear to be a waste of taxpayers’ money. Punishment is relative to the individual. A man such as Dick has been amply punished by the loss of his profession and public stature.”

  Scruggs, who received copies of the letters, was able to call upon them for consolation while awaiting sentencing. But Khayat’s comments ignited a different reaction elsewhere.

  Biggers allowed reporters to read the letters, and excerpts from the messages were published. Learning of Khayat’s strong support, Grady Tollison became indignant. Though he had once worked in the same firm with the chancellor, Tollison told friends he hoped the new law school would never be named for Khayat.

  The letter also proved counterproductive with a more significant figure. Instead of being persuaded by Khayat’s argument, Judge Biggers himself was said to be infuriated.

  CHAPTER 26

  The evening before Dick Scruggs’s sentencing, his California lawyers sampled a taste of rustic Mississippi nightlife. John Keker and his associate Brook Dooley rode with Rex Deloach and others to Taylor, an artsy community eight miles from Oxford, to have dinner at a legendary catfish place called Taylor Grocery. They found themselves in a nest of strange sounds: the hubbub of demin-clad diners and the twangs of a jug band playing for tips in the back. The village occupies a “dry” corner of Lafayette County, where alcohol is illegal, so customers are forced to bring their own. With no notice, the group’s table was supplied with the sizable remains of a magnum of wine.

  John Hailman, the recently retired federal prosecutor and wine maven, was leaving after dinner, and on the way out he thought to give the visitors what was left in his bottle. “Welcome to Oxford,” he said to the group. “Looks like you need some wine.” His gesture was a token of the informality at Taylor Grocery. Hailman had recognized Keker, but Scruggs’s attorney did not know the identity of the donor.

  The next day, a crowd began to gather outside Judge Biggers’s courtroom nearly an hour before doors opened. Many of them had come to give moral support to Scruggs: members of his family, including all of Diane’s siblings, and close friends such as Mike Moore, Sam Davis, and Robert Khayat. Others, though, had different reasons for being there. Roberts Wilson, the former partner who had fought with Scruggs for fifteen years, had made the trip from his home in Alabama to witness the latest installment in the downfall of Dick Scruggs. Wilson’s lawyer, Charlie Merkel, had driven over from Clarksdale to see his old enemy in the dock. And Grady Tollison, whose case had resulted in the bribery, sat inside the rails of the courtroom, uncomfortably close to the defendant’s table.

  When Scruggs entered, he carried none of the ebullience that had characterized his appearance in the same room three months earlier when he pleaded guilty. He seemed as somber as his dark suit and tie, and he held his hands in a prayerful position.

  The terms of Scruggs’s five-year sentence were assured, and so was his $250,000 fine. But there were official rulings that needed to be made. Biggers said he was satisfied that Scruggs was “a leader and a planner” of the conspiracy to bribe Judge Lackey, and he said he considered Zach a “particpant” in the conspiracy regardless of the reduced charge Scruggs’s son had accepted. The March 2007 meeting between the two Scruggs men, Backstrom, Balducci, and Patterson “was the starting of the scheme to corrupt the integrity of the Lafayette County Circuit Court,” Biggers said.

  Before undertaking the “very unpleasant duty” of passing sentence, the judge asked Scruggs if he had anything he wished to say.

  Standing before Biggers and flanked by Keker, Scruggs said:

  “I could not be more ashamed than to be where I am today, mixed up in a judicial bribery scheme that I participated in. I realized that I was getting mixed up in it. And I will go to my grave wondering why.”

  Sniffles could be heard among his supporters.

  “I have disappointed everyone in my life: my wife, my family, my son, particularly. My friends—many of whom were kind enough to come up today and to write to the court. I deeply regret my conduct. I’m sorrowful for it. It is a scar and a stain on my soul that will be there forever.”

  Keker followed with his own brief remarks. He said it would take mystical southern novelists—William Faulkner or Walker Percy—“to understand how these kinds of things happen.” Keker said he was perplexed by Scruggs’s “passivity,” and added, “In this instance, I think I’m beginning to understand, but I just don’t understand about how it all happened.”

  His client, he said, “has fallen about as far as a man can fall.”

  Keker asked that Scruggs be allowed to report to prison at a later date rather than be immediately taken into custody. He requested that Scruggs be assigned to a federal correctional camp in Pensacola, Florida, where his family would be able to visit him. And he sought an additional thirty days for Scruggs to pay the fine.

  Biggers accepted the first two requests as “reasonable.” Of the third, he said, “I question why you need thirty days to get up the $250,000 when it’s in your checking account.”

  After Keker referred to “cash flow problems that I can explain to you if you wanted me to,” Biggers approved the delay. But the judge had sharp words for Scruggs.

  Biggers spoke of previous cases in which lawyers, doctors, ministers, business executives, and bankers had appeared before him. “They were willing to risk their freedom and their profession to get some money,” Biggers said. “And yet you neither thought you needed money or did need money. Yet you committed a reprehensible crime which, in my opinion, is one of the most reprehensible crimes that a lawyer can commit …

  “I do not have to know why you’ve done it,” he continued. “I just have to know that you did it. And there’s no doubt that you did it. I’ve heard the tapes. I’ve heard you say you did it.”

  As the judge who had authorized the wiretaps and search warrant, Biggers had been in a position to follow the accumulation of evidence long before any charges were actually filed against Scruggs. “I was personally shocked when I fir
st learned about this situation with you and your partners,” Judge Biggers said. “I was shocked as I learned the evidence as it developed. And when I saw how, when you were approached with this scheme, I saw how easily and quickly you entered into it. And it made me think that this, perhaps, is not the first time you’ve done it because you did it so easily. You didn’t really take time to think about it. And there is evidence before the court that you have done it before.”

  Biggers, of course, was speaking of the case involving Judge DeLaughter in which Scruggs had been implicated. Though Scruggs had not yet been charged in the second case, the government was using it to justify their 404(b) tactic. The judge seemed to be throwing his own weight behind the prosecutors.

  Biggers was not finished. He told Scruggs: “You attempted to bribe Judge Lackey. You found out that Judge Lackey is not a man to bribe … And another thing that doesn’t make any sense—it makes your crime more reprehensible … The court system has made you a rich man, and yet you have attempted to corrupt it.”

  Scruggs began to quiver. His arms twitched and his knees buckled. Some of the spectators gasped. While Keker held on to his client’s arm, a court officer produced a chair for Scruggs to sit in.

  Noting Scruggs’s condition, the judge paused briefly, then said that a transcript of his remarks would be available for the shaken defendant. “You may not remember what I’m saying, but there’s some people who you’re involved with—who I have become intrigued in this situation,” Biggers said. It was obvious he was referring to P. L. Blake, long the most mysterious figure in the case.

  “When I see, from this case and others, that people who are not lawyers are getting considerable amounts of money from a legal settlement, and, you know, it intrigues me as to what they’re doing to earn it, if anything … Balducci said that you know where a lot of bodies are buried. If you want to uncover some of those bodies, it might help you in the future in this case and this sentencing.”

  Judge Biggers had another stern observation about a man sitting in the courtroom, Chancellor Robert Khayat. “One person who wrote a letter said he thought sending you to prison would be a waste of the taxpayer’s money. To alleviate any concerns for that person, the taxpayers won’t have to pay for your incarceration.” Staring at Scruggs, the judge said, “You’ll pay for it yourself” with the $250,000 fine.

  Scruggs was able to rise and listen as the judge handed down his formal sentence. Though Biggers included a provision for drug treatment in prison, his remark seemed lost, like so much boilerplate language, on others in the courtroom. When the session ended, less than forty-five minutes after it began, Scruggs walked to the spectator’s section, embraced Diane, and thanked friends for “being here with me this morning.”

  John Hailman, whom Scruggs had wanted to commission to help stock his wine cellar before Hailman launched the Lackey investigation, came forward. He offered a curious expression of support, shaking Scruggs’s hand and telling him, “I was glad to see you get up just then. That means you’re going to make it.”

  At that moment, in a state courtroom across the Oxford square, Khayat was the subject of more judicial criticism. Judge Lackey was presiding over a case in which the university was the defendant in a small-bore civil action. During the morning session, Judge Lackey had called for pauses in the proceedings while he used a cell phone.

  Suddenly, he said he had an announcement to make. “As you know probably, I’ve been involved in a matter involving Dick Scruggs and others,” he explained to attorneys who had been wondering about his behavior. “Mr. Scruggs was just sentenced in federal court about four blocks from where we’re sitting today. Receiving sixty months to serve and, I believe, a $250,000 fine. And it’s one of these phone calls—or a couple of them—was what that was about.”

  Judge Lackey had just overruled a motion by the university attorneys for a summary judgment in their favor. Now he was recusing himself. The lawyers were flabbergasted that he was doing both in the same breath.

  The judge had more to say.

  “It’s come to my attention that Chancellor Khayat proceeded with some of the Scruggs family there at the sentencing, and it’s come to my attention that the university, speaking through Chancellor Khayat and other faculty and staff members, have spoken out praising Dick Scruggs, requesting leniency from the court and describing him as a model citizen and apparently condoning judicial bribery.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge intoned, “I’m embarrassed for our state. I’m ashamed for the public disgrace and the disrepute that has been caused to this great university. I’m mortified that some of our so-called educational leaders and literary icons cannot find the moral courage to publicly condemn and denounce the reprehensible, vile, and evil acts that have besmirched the professional reputation of the many, many honest and trustworthy lawyers of this state.”

  As a result, Judge Lackey said, he could no longer give the university a fair trial and he pulled out of the case. In closing, he said, “Thank you for allowing me to vent my frustration.”

  Following his father’s sentencing, Zach went to his parents’ home for a gathering of close friends. Afterward, he took Amy for a late lunch on the square. Before they entered City Grocery, Zach reconnoitered the crowd. If there were news correspondents present, he wanted to go elsewhere. A couple of weeks earlier, a reporter had spied Zack with a friend in the bar upstairs. The next day, an article in the Jackson paper noted that Zach had been drinking Grey Goose, an expensive vodka.

  Instead of journalists, Zach spotted a table he wanted to avoid. Roberts Wilson and several members of his family were celebrating Scruggs’s humiliation. The festive group had started with shots of Grey Goose, then moved on to champagne. Buoyed by the spirits, the Wilson family began singing the chorus of an old ballad by a Mississippi country troubador, Jimmie Rodgers, “In the Jailhouse Now.”

  Zach and Amy left before the Wilson table grew boisterous. After learning of the incident, John Currence, City Grocery’s owner, called Zach to apologize. The behavior was regrettable, Currence told him, and did not reflect the feelings of anyone connected with the restaurant.

  At two o’clock that afternoon, it was Sid Backstrom’s turn to stand before Judge Biggers. Backstrom’s wife, Kelli, was there with many of their friends, wiping away tears. Backstrom tried to smile from across the courtroom in support, but appeared close to breaking down, too.

  With Frank Trapp and Rhea Tannehill at his side, Backstrom pulled notes from his pocket and addressed the judge.

  He said he wanted “to express my profound sorrow to my family, to this court, and the bar” for his involvement in the case. “I have been haunted by the events leading to my indictment every day since late November, and will likely be for the rest of my life. I have cried with my wife and my children too many times to count. That punishment, along with always wondering of the damage I’ve caused to my family and three children, will never leave me.”

  Backstrom’s voice broke. Tannehill held the back of his suit jacket to keep him from falling, then put his arm around his shoulders, rubbing gently.

  First Trapp, then Tannehill, told the judge of their client’s remorse and contrition. But when Tannehill described Backstrom as a “caretaker” for his elderly grandmother, his widowed stepmother, and his brother, who was imprisoned himself, Biggers asked, “What does being a caretaker have to do with the reason he’s standing before the court?”

  “Your Honor, I think that in some ways he was just trying to help the situation,” Tannehill said, “and I think he takes responsibility for that.”

  “Well, thank goodness all caretakers are not before the court having been convicted of a serious crime,” the judge said.

  Despite the tone of Biggers’s comment about caretakers, he appeared pleased by Backstrom’s picture of abject remorse.

  “Frankly, I’ve been kind of surprised at the lightness with which this judicial bribery case has been taken by some people who are supposed to be
role models to law students and to other students, generally, young people, as to how they should conduct themselves,” Biggers said, adding that he was impressed by Backstrom’s “state of mind.”

  “I remember when you pled guilty, Mr. Backstrom, you were very remorseful at that time,” he said, referring to Backstrom’s tearful appearance three months earlier. “I cannot say that I have seen that type of remorse with some of your co-defendants.”

  Zach was sitting in the courtroom with his mother, but he failed to appreciate the portent of Biggers’s remarks.

  Even as Biggers complimented Backstrom for his penitence, he complained about his failure to implicate Zach. “There’s one thing that I have not seen from you that I thought I would see,” Judge Biggers said, “and that is some kind of cooperation on your part with the government. They gave you a plea agreement that provided your sentence would be capped at half of Mr. Scruggs’s sentence, and that was based on assumed cooperation from you. I understand there was a proffer of some kind of cooperation before the plea agreement was made, but there has been no cooperation.”

  “I think we’ve done what we’ve been asked to do,” Trapp replied.

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard any testimony or any proffer from the government about his knowledge of the others’ activities—especially one co-defendant I was interested in.”

  “There has not been any knowledge of that, that he has, Your Honor,” Trapp said.

  “Well, all right,” the judge said. “I question about what he knew about the other things. But based on that, I will accept the plea agreement.”

  Backstrom’s day in court was done, but Zach’s lay ahead, a week later. Zach continued to believe that he would not be saddled with a prison sentence, but his friends and family were no longer sure.