The Fall of the House of Zeus

by Curtis Wilkie

  By the morning that Zach faced Judge Biggers, he finally understood the precarious state of his position. Before leaving his office the night before, he told his father’s longtime secretary, Charlene Bosarge, “I may have to serve some time.” But Zach was resolute about his courtroom appearance. He would not be craven. And he asked Mike Moore to defend him if the judge said anything objectionable.

  Zach’s formal remarks were very brief. “I am deeply sorry and regretful for my involvement in this case. I wish that I could go back and change what happened a year ago. And I should have stopped what happened,” he said, “I didn’t do that … For that, I’m deeply sorry and remorseful. And I ask this court’s forgiveness. And my challenge now is to try to rebuild my life, Your Honor.”

  Before Biggers issued his sentence, Tom Dawson rose to say that the prosecutors recommended probation when Zach pleaded guilty. “We meant that then, and we mean that now.”

  Biggers pointed out that he was not bound by any agreement.

  “Your case is a sad case, Mr. Scruggs,” the judge said. “The primary actor in this case was your father. It would not have happened without him. And it makes it even sadder that you, his son, was [sic] brought into it. The evidence in this case shows that you were fully aware of this corruption—attempted corruption of Judge Lackey. You took that order that Balducci brought up to your law office, the corrupt order that was attempted to be bought from Judge Lackey. And you made comments on it. You said where commas should be and what things should be said about it, what the order would say.”

  Listening to the judge, Moore began to shake his head. Biggers seemed to be confusing Zach with his father’s comment to Balducci about a colon in the punctuation of the order during the damning November 1 conversation recorded by the FBI.

  Biggers said he had listened to the recordings. “It was just clear that you not only knew what was going on,” he said, “you were participating in what was going on. You helped write that order.”

  He stopped and glared at Moore. “You shake your head, Mr. Moore, but I heard the tapes. He suggested what should be in that order, that corrupted order. Have you heard that?”

  “Judge, I’ve listened to every tape …”

  “Well, then, you’ve heard that if you’ve listened to every tape.”

  “I hope I get a chance to respond,” Moore said.

  “You’ve had your chance to respond,” Biggers snapped, then reconsidered. “Well, you can respond to that. Go ahead.”

  It seemed as if arcs of electricity were shooting between the two men.

  “Zach Scruggs never had any knowledge whatsoever that there was any conspiracy to bribe a judge in this case,” Moore began.

  Biggers interrupted. “He’s not being sentenced for conspiring to bribe a judge.”

  “I understand, Judge.”

  “He’s being sentenced for misprision of a felony. But the underlying offense is the corruption of a judge. He knew that Judge Lackey was being corrupted—”

  “Your Honor, I—”

  “And whether it was for money or whatever else is really immaterial. It was a corrupt order.”

  “The only difference—and I don’t want to offend the court,” Moore responded, “but the only difference is that the only thing Zach knew was that Tim Balducci went to have a conversation with Judge Lackey. He never knew that anybody conspired to bribe a judge or to do something untoward. The tape you’re talking about is a tape that occurred after Tim Balducci came to the Scruggs Law Firm on November the first, wired up, saying he was there to meet with two individuals, Sid Backstrom and Dick Scruggs. Zach Scruggs, all the evidence would show, happened to walk in the room that day. He was never a part of that. And that’s the only evidence the government ever had in this case. And that may be a distinction without a difference in Your Honor’s mind, but it’s a distinction in Zach’s mind.”

  “Well, that’s something you can argue. Whether or not that’s true remains open,” Biggers said. “You know, when Mr. Backstrom—who’s admitted he was part of the bribe—and your client are as close as they were; they’re up there in that office every day talking about legal projects for the firm. It’s kind of a stretch of credulity to believe that Backstrom never mentioned that money was being sent down to Judge Lackey. You can claim that. You can argue that. And as far as the law is concerned, I’m going to base the sentence on that. But whether or not I believe that is something else.”

  Moore said that in all of the hundreds of conversations recorded by the government, “there’s no mention of Zach Scruggs in this case anywhere.”

  “What do you say, Mr. Dawson?” Biggers asked the prosecutor.

  “I’d have to disagree with that statement. Zach Scruggs is mentioned on some of the tapes.”

  Zach’s name had not only been mentioned in some of the captured conversations, but his voice could actually be heard in the November 1

  conversation with Balducci in Backstrom’s office. The judge seized on that.

  “When you—Mr. Scruggs—and Mr. Backstrom were talking with Mr. Balducci over this order that he had brought to you before it had been entered by Judge Lackey, it was an order that you were commenting on how it should read and what it should say.”

  The judge recalled Zach’s earlier comments when he pleaded guilty concerning his respect for the legal profession. “You certainly had no great respect for the Circuit Court of Lafayette County or Judge Lackey, because the tapes show that you told Mr. Balducci and Mr. Backstrom that we need to hurry up and get this order signed before some other ‘asshole’ gets the case. Now that’s a total thumb in your nose at the Lafayatte County Circuit Court. And it contradicts your statement to the court that you have a great love and respect for the legal profession.”

  Judge Biggers reminded Zach that his plea bargain did not bind the court.

  “Your Honor, we were informed by the government on that matter,” Moore said. “We asked for a binding plea—”

  “You didn’t get it,” Biggers said. “You were here when he entered a plea of guilty. I told you it was not binding.”

  “Judge, we know that,” Moore said, “I just—”

  “If I want you to say any more, Mr. Moore, I’ll ask for it.”

  “Judge, I appreciate that. I thought a lawyer could always respond to the court respectfully.”

  “No, you do not. I didn’t ask you to respond. I wasn’t saying anything to you. I was saying it to your client.”

  Moore apologized “if I’ve offended the court in some way representing my client.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about it,” Biggers said, repeating that there was never a binding plea agreement.

  “The only response I have,” Moore said, “if it’s okay for me to respond … is that we attempted to do a binding plea, and the government informed us that this court would not accept a binding plea on probation. And that’s why we did not do it that way.”

  Biggers put an end to the colloquy and moved to his decision. He said that presentencing guidelines called for a twenty-one- to twenty-seven-month sentence. “I am giving some weight to the government’s recommendation for leniency,” he said.

  Nevertheless, he sentenced Zach to fourteen months in prison.

  Biggers declared a recess. As Zach turned toward his supporters in the courtroom, he could see that many of them were sobbing in shock over his prison sentence. Zach’s expression was grim, but he did not cry.

  He was approached by a man who wanted to offer a formal introduction. “Zach, I’m Tom Dawson. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Zach stopped him with a baleful eye. “You broke your deal, and we’re not going to meet now.”

  Surprised by Zach’s brusque response, Dawson had a curt rejoinder. “Well, enjoy your time.”

  The courtroom was emptying. Several of Zach’s fraternity brothers gave him condolences. He was hugged by others, and he exchanged a long abrazo with Ollie Rencher, a priest at St. Peter’s Episcopal Chu
rch, where he and Amy were communicants.

  Jim Greenlee, the U.S. attorney, was moving toward the door when confronted by Diane Scruggs. By this time, she was beyond tears. Clear-eyed, she looked at Greenlee and stretched her arms wide.

  “I thought we had an agreement,” she said.

  Greenlee did not reply. He was not sure what Diane had said, and even if he had understood her, he had no answer.

  CHAPTER 27

  More than a year passed.

  Alone among those who pleaded guilty, Zach Scruggs continued to protest that he was innocent, the victim of a crime created by his own government. His defiant attitude fit the image the federal authorities had cast for him—that of a spoiled, hot-tempered brat—and it did him no favors. His six months in a low-security prison camp in Forrest City, Arkansas, were spent uneventfully, broken only by the birth of a daughter, Ellie, in October. He was not allowed to be with his family for the occasion.

  From Arkansas, Zach followed, with some annoyance, that fall’s election in Mississippi, where Roger Wicker campaigned to hold on to the Senate seat vacated by Zach’s uncle Trent. No matter that Zach, a fellow Sigma Nu, had once worked in Wicker’s congressional office or that Wicker had been the recipient of campaign contributions from him and his father. Wicker, a Republican, was being challenged by former governor Ronnie Musgrove. In spite of his own background with the Scruggs family, Wicker tarred his opponent for his association with the new felons. The text of one Wicker flyer, distributed statewide by the Republican Senatorial Campaign Commmittee, read:

  “Convicted trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs guaranteed a loan for Musgrove’s campaign. Dickie Scruggs guaranteed a loan for $75K for Musgrove’s campaign for lt. governor and has given over $110K in campaign contributions to his campaigns. Scruggs met privately with Musgrove in the governor’s office to discuss a judicial appointment. Scruggs is now in prison for bribing a judge.”

  Wicker won the election, ensuring the continuity that Trent Lott had preserved between Washington and the old conservative network in Mississippi.

  On February 24, 2009, the day Zach transferred from Forrest City to a halfway house in Tupelo, Mississippi, he stopped in Oxford to pick up non-prison clothes and to have lunch downtown with members of his family. Though he felt that no rule specifically forbade the activity, the Bureau of Prisons cracked down on him following newspaper reports of a Zach “sighting” on the square. He was thrust back into the hands of U.S. marshals and put in the county jail in Oxford, which doubled as a federal facility, for ten days.

  While there, he caught the first glimpse of his father since they were imprisoned. Dick had been brought back to Oxford to appear before a grand jury.

  Zach’s temporary job with family friend Lowry Lomax was nixed by authorities, but he was eventually allowed to return to the halfway house and begin working weekdays for a catfish farming operation with offices in Oxford. Soon he was able to spend weekends, with strict curfews, at home with Amy and their three children.

  He was the first to go free, in August 2009, but he retained an abiding bitterness. His friends and family worried about his unforgiving mood. They counseled him to try to put the experience behind him, to meet the years ahead with as positive an outlook as possible. But Zach continued to seethe.

  Sid Backstrom had also been assigned to prison in Forrest City, and he handled his sentence with more equanimity. Since the facility was only a two-hour drive from Oxford, he regularly saw his wife and friends. By serving his time without attracting attention, he expected to be free before the end of 2010.

  The Backstroms had moved into their new home in a secluded cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Oxford shortly before he was incarcerated. Settling down in the house, which had been designed for them in detail, offered a diversion for the family. But there was one drawback: it was quite close to the home of Judge Biggers.

  · · ·

  Joey Langston had hoped for a reduced sentence. The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a motion—which became public after the document was posted on the court’s Internet connection by mistake—asking Judge Michael Mills to look sympathetically on the case. After pleading guilty, the prosecutors said, Langston had “cooperated to an extent that clearly exceeds the government’s expectation.” He had informed authorities about his knowledge of Scruggs’s role in the bribery case involving Judge DeLaughter, described how he had arranged to pay Ed Peters, and answered questions about P. L. Blake.

  Moreover, the prosecutors pointed out, Langston had recently suffered a heart attack, and the grounds of his home in Booneville had been visited by a “possible intruder” driving a van “packed with electronic equipment.”

  Langston’s friends filled the courtroom on the day he faced formal sentencing. When Judge Mills refused to pare any time from the three-year prison sentence agreed upon in the plea bargain, Langston wept, and so did many of his supporters. He was sent to a facility in Montgomery, Alabama.

  Steve Patterson joined his former partner in the Montgomery prison camp. He was sentenced on the same morning, Friday, February 13, 2009, as his more recent partner, Tim Balducci, but the courtroom styles of the two men were strikingly different.

  Patterson walked boldly past a gauntlet of photographers and television cameramen outside the courthouse and later told Judge Biggers that he was “an embarrassed man with much to be embarrassed about.” He quoted his grandmother and Winston Churchill.

  Before sentencing Patterson, the judge revealed some startling information from a presentencing report compiled by federal probation officers. Patterson had been receiving $80,000 a month from the tobacco spoils, a payment that had been reduced to $20,000 a month. Biggers did not explain the source of the income.

  (It came from Langston for Patterson’s help in smoothing some of the rough edges of the byzantine settlement in the Butler secondhand smoke case. Langston paid Balducci a $100,000 bonus for his role in the affair and agreed to pay Patterson a “consulting fee” of $80,000 a month as long as the “three points” money came in from Scruggs.)

  Described by federal prosecutors as a “minor” player in the scheme to bribe Judge Lackey, Patterson drew a two-year sentence.

  · · ·

  Minutes later, Tim Balducci appeared in the same courtroom. He had asked federal marshals to allow him to enter the building through a back door, out of sight of the cameras. Once inside, he stood by himself, with no lawyer to represent him. He had little to say. All of Balducci’s brashness seemed washed away, and he actually looked diminished in size.

  Prosecutors praised Balducci for his cooperation in breaking the case he had actually conceived. He was also given a two-year prison sentence, which he began serving in a federal facility in Estill, South Carolina.

  After fourteen years as chancellor of the University of Mississippi, Robert Khayat retired in the summer of 2009. He was seventy years old. Though he had aggravated a few critics because of his support of Dick Scruggs, Khayat was almost universally praised for his leadership at the end of his career. Not only had the school’s enrollment increased 44 percent during his stewardship, but the number of “minority” students had grown by nearly 80 percent. Over the same period, the Ole Miss endowment had tripled.

  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 of
fice 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.”