Precious little on Scruggs (but a surprise)

Okay, tout-le-monde must be a leetle logy this morning (ah, I’ve got company), or at least toute-la-Scruggsiana is, only one new news story and no new blogging appearing so far.

I guess everybody’s more focused on Haley Barbour’s anticipated announcement of Rep. Roger Wicker’s appointment to the Trent Lott Senate seat (that, or y’all are all hung-over from the Liberty Bowl. I understand congratz are in order to the State crowd: woohoo, Purple&White!).

Since the AP’s story on the joint defense motion for discovery breaks no news, I’m reduced to filching comments from a two-day-old Rossmiller thread to find us anything of interest. There, our capitalization-and-apostrophe-averse pal iwannaknow says:

the request for prior similar acts, while undoubtedly potentially relevant to this case, also serves another purpose – to advise defendants (and, my bet, others currently under investigation) what the government has uncovered in its ongoing grand jury investigations of other possible uncharged crimes. wouldnt that be valuable knowledge for defendants and other uncharged parties to know?

Raw-thuh. And depending on what it may eventually include, iwk’s fellow-commenter “M.Williams” (whose ethereal flights of thought this earthbound flowah often has trouble tracking), could be onto something:

[I]t’s hard to believe this [trial] will be in [February]. Further, might it not also be more than a year or more?

You-all with experience in such things, what do you think? Lining up the story in the defense motion against your own experience, how long would you expect Judge Biggers to allow for the completion of discovery? And how big a gap between the defense’s demands and the prosecution’s production would make a winnable issue on appeal?

Rossmiller-commenter “Tim” feels that, “[W]ith the reference to ‘bodies being buried,’ [the boilerplate request for any evidence of the defendants' prior bad acts is] even more important in this case, both as a credibility attack on Balducci if there are no bodies buried and to know if the Gov’t is going to contend they did it before if the Defense says Balducci acting on his own and entrapped them.”

Have we thoughts on this?

Whether or no, here’s the surprise (for which we’re endebted, as so often, to jim). I bet you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the two messy powerplay stories we’ve been foloing lately, Mississippi and Pakistan, have a nexus. But lo an’ behol’, they do.

In the Delta Democrat Times, at a URL only an autistic could love (check it out), Ross Reily tells the story of Benazir Bhutto’s long-ago visit to Greenville and Oxford.

How ’bout that for “small world”?

lotus

“They don’t know any better”

UPDATED BELOW (X 3)

“Pakistan’s Zapruder film” has surfaced in a report from Britain’s Channel 4, putting the lie to the Pakistani government’s “bumped her head” explanation of how Benazir Bhutto died. Juan Cole reports:

Bhutto aide Sherry Rehman … said that she saw bullet wounds in Bhutto’s head. She disputed a government report that Bhutto died from being thrown against a lever of her sun roof by the blast of a suicide bomb. She told CNN, “It’s beginning to look like a cover up to me . . .” Apparently PPP leaders suspect that Bhutto’s bullet wounds might point back to involvement by Musharraf’s security forces (did he use a standard police or army firearm?). A mere suicide bombing would apparently be easier to reconcile with the government’s allegation that a jihadi group was behind the assassination. The warring narratives about Bhutto’s death therefore appear to have a CSI sort of forensic concern behind them. Different physical evidence would point in different directions as to perpetrator.

No wonder Mush had the firehoses out so promptly – though not before Channel 4’s tape caught three of his cops (light tan trousers, black shirts) standing near the shooter. As we wonder why Musharraf felt the need to concoct and try to sell his stupid story, Josh Marshall considers this the best explanation he’s seen:

CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, who worked in U.S. intelligence in Pakistan during the Clinton administration, said he suspects Bhutto’s enemies are attempting to control her legacy by minimizing the attack’s role in her demise.

“They’re trying to deny her a martyr’s death, and in Islam, that’s pretty important,” Robinson said.

Bhutto, he said, threatens to become more influential in death than she was in life. “Her torch burns bright now forever. She’s forever young; she’s forever brave, challenging against all odds the party in power and challenging the military and Islamic extremism.”

Keker’s deck is missing some cards

UPDATED BELOW

Unlike the TV writers, David Rossmiller is back-to-work in a big way, with two posts yesterday, Day 31 of what he calls “Scruggs Nation.”

The earlier of the two deals extensively with Dickie Scruggs’s and Cori and Kerri Rigsby’s pleadings to Gulfport-based U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter, Jr., to quash the video depositions of Dickie and Zach Scruggs that Magistrate Judge Robert Walker recently ruled (in McIntosh) must begin on January 15. They’re asking Judge Senter, as Rossmiller nutshells it, “to modify or overturn the magistrate’s rulings because, it is claimed, the depositions will improperly impinge on attorney-client communications.” This post links to and discusses documents in such detail as to deposit readers who aren’t practicing attorneys in some pretty tall grass. My old machete’s too rusty to get us in and out of there safely, so may we tag-alongs rely on y’all with fresher-honed blades to retrieve any do-not-misses you find there for us? Our thanks in advance . . .

Rossmiller’s later Saturday post focuses on four developments, the last of which I’ll discuss in particular. Before reaching it, though, he mentions, first, the lawsuit filed on December 20 in Hinds County Court by Mississippi State Auditor Phil Bryant against the Langston Law Firm, Joey Langston, and Tim Balducci, seeking the return to state coffers of $18 million in attorneys’ fees/a charitable donation derived from the MCI tax litigation. Apparently LNL’s coverage of this quite delighted Y’allPolitics — though commenter “T. Frank” (is any relation to Frank Trapp, Sid Backstrom’s defender in U.S. v. Scruggs, purely coincidental?) pointed out,

Unsurprisingly, you and the LNL failed to report that Langston et al. have moved for summary judgment. Why don’t you link that document and supporting brief? It would be interesting if Bryant has summary judgment rendered against him, only to find himself the defendant in a malicious prosecution action.

Another point of interest here: Bryant’s complaint (pdf) is signed by attorney Arthur F. Jernigan, Jr. – according to our friend Coastal Cowboy, the same conflict-counsel who represented Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lee Harrell in McIntosh.

Pakistan update

UPDATED BELOW

“Given that the surviving members of the Bhutto clan could easily take the money and run,” writes Graham Stewart in the Times of London,

the extent to which their sense of mission, or entitlement, propels them to persist with political controversy is remarkable.

Yet while the Romanovs, Bourbons and Habsburgs endured their share of family mishap, you must go back to 14th-century Italy to find a European equivalent to the dangers that have engulfed the Bhuttos. …

This interesting story and its sidebars Dynasty may still continue, Who’s who in the Bhutto dynasty, and The queen is dead. Long live the cause, introduce us to the turbulent, fated House of Bhutto. Elsewhere in ToL, Jeremy Page’s Main suspects are warlords and security forces lists their extra-mural enemies.

Meanwhile, as ToL, the New York Times, and The Independent (among others) report, Pervez Musharraf’s government is straight-facedly claiming that Benazir Bhutto died of a bump on the head. Yup, the spokesman said, the assassin’s three shots missed her, but the poor thing fractured her skull because the bomb’s shockwaves made her hit her head on a lever attached to the sun-roof.

Yes! He knows this is true! Who needs an autopsy! From McClatchy:

Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Mohammadmian Soomro, told the Cabinet that Bhutto’s husband had insisted on no autopsy. But according to a leading lawyer, Athar Minallah, an autopsy is mandatory under Pakistan’s criminal law in a case of this nature.

“It is absurd, because without autopsy it is not possible to investigate. Is the state not interested in reaching the perpetrators of this heinous crime or there was a cover-up?” Minallah said.

The scene of the attack also was watered down with a high-pressure hose within an hour, washing away evidence.

Lick-and-a-promise posting, a la lotus

UPDATED BELOW

In the Sun-Herald, Anita Lee’s new story begins:

Oxford attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs is fighting to avoid testifying in at least two federal court cases, one in Mississippi and another in Alabama, while he faces criminal contempt charges in Alabama.

A federal court order Scruggs secured in Oxford puts on hold pretrial testimony he was subpoenaed to give in federal lawsuit filed in Alabama against two insurance whistle-blowers. Scruggs also is asking a federal judge to stop a subpoena that would force him and his son, attorney Zach Scruggs, to testify in a lawsuit policyholders filed in Gulfport against State Farm.

Magistrate Judge Robert H. Walker already has ruled the Scruggses must testify in the State Farm case, but they are appealing to Walker’s superior, U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr., to change the ruling. U.S. Magistrate Judge Allan Alexander, who sits in Oxford, stopped the Alabama subpoena. …

It’s also festooned with pdf links:

Magistrate Judge Walker rules Scruggses must testify in McIntosh case

Magistrate Judge Alexander stops Scruggs testimony in Alabama

Scruggs continues effort to stop testimony in McIntosh case

And from the Daily Journal’s Patsy Brumfield, we have Scruggs’ defense team wants more from prosecutors, featuring the defense’s 14-page motion for discovery and at least one surprising defense request — “each defendant’s prior criminal record” — you can have a criminal record and remain in the MS Bar? Wow, who knew.

We also learn that the defense’s Boxing Day delivery included 13 taped conversations between Tim Balducci and Judge Lackey (they still want the results of any Balducci polygraph) and various other items of interest. Note comments from Tony Farese.

From New Orleans’ WDSU, there’s this brief item, Scruggs Fights Deposition By State Farm.

Happy parsing as I slip off to south Asia for a few . . .

lotus

UPDATE: Coastal Cowboy has sent this pdf of Deputy Insurance Commissioner Lee Harrell’s first (June 7, 2007) — and rather-embarrassing-to-State-Farm – deposition in McIntosh. It’s quite long, but one very-telling passage comes early on (page 7 of 294), when Zach Scruggs poses a question that apparently makes Harrell uncomfortable:

Q: Who is, to your knowledge, paying the legal bills of Mr. Streetman to represent you here today?

A: Department of Insurance is approving those at the request of the approval of the attorney general pursuant to the statutes of the state of Mississippi. The Commissioner of Insurance is entitled to obtain outside attorneys, outside experts, any outside person they need. And the attorney general’s office approved the retention of Mr. Streetman, and they approved that pursuant to that statute that State Farm as a result of this litigation and result of our examination should have to pay for the outside legal counsel since we could not use the attorney general’s office because they were conflicted.

Q: I’m sorry, if I understood the last part, that State Farm is paying for your counsel?

A: Yes, sir, pursuant to agreement from the attorney general’s office. …

At this point, Harrell’s just explained that, once the Attorney General’s office determined it had a conflict, it had to find outside counsel for him. “It took longer than normal because there’s so many different law firms involved in so much diverse Katrina litigation,” he said. “It’s normally a fairly quick process to find outside counsel. In this case it took a while.”

What else should we watch for here, Cowboy or others?

Reality-checking

You know, my deahs, something NMC said last evening got me to thinking about reality checks. And then I had enough trouble following some other conversation that my own internal reality-check bawled “too tired to think, need non-focus for a bit.”

So I logged off to give ye olde brain a rest, and this morning, the sucker flatly refuses get out of bed. Seems I gotta wait a bit before trying to make it weave another piece of fabric. But its last output before going on strike went something like this:

Not a one of us here is 100% clued-in (I have no idea what “BK man” means, for instance), and though you couldn’t prove it by recent archive, folo is nothing like Y’allPolitics or Rossmiller’s place — it’s not a Mississippi, nor a law, nor an insurance, nor any other kind of “insider” or niche blog. ‘Tisn’t a chatroom just for specialists, even when it’s reveling in the company of excellent ones.

Despite my current fascination with Scruggsiana, I’d never want to narrow my own focus — or require that folo readers narrow theirs — to this extent permanently, even if I could. Whatever its topic, always I want folo to be as comprehensible and unjargoned, and therefore attractive, to as many smart people as possible. Its first readers, none of whom are born Mississippians (that I know of) and only a handful of whom are lawyers (that I know of) are as precious to me as y’all newer chums who are both. So please, commenters who are indeed one or both, stay mindful of those of us who aren’t. Please try to phrase what you say so it’ll be immediately useful to educated readers who’ve neither lived where you have nor practiced your profession. Though we don’t know who and what you do, we’re still mighty interested in this story.

For the foreseeable future, the saga of Dickie Scruggs and where it’s going will have me fascinated, both for their own richness and as pieces of my overall project: to detect and understand the things we groundlings must, to ward off whatever’s flying at us from the (mostly) fools overhead.

But at some point, having gleaned what lessons I can from Scruggsiana, I’ll move on along. And I’ll be very glad indeed for all good company, wherever we find ourselves.

lotus

The confusion re Eastland continues

UPDATED BELOW RIGHT HERE

[It just occurred to me that this is Scruggsiana's one-month birthday: Dickie an' them got busted only one month ago, no matter how much like a year it feels to some of us. Salud.]

Following a not-brief interlude for some kind of virus or malware episode and the Full Norton rigmarole, here’s your promised dessert, Scruggsians.

Ever-vigilant jim spotted and grabbed for us a December 18 story from the Greenwood Commonwealth about hometown boy Hiram Eastland and his gig as defense attorney for Steve Patterson in U.S. v. Scruggs. It has several interesting features, such as Eastland’s allowing that the government has cooperated “in every way with the defense,” and that his two sons, Hiram III and Jacob, and daughter-in-law Vickie Eastland are assisting him on the case.

But the most interesting passage is the last:

He has known Patterson, both professionally and personally, for many years, [Eastland] said.

“I guess you could say we’re very personal friends,” he said, adding that Patterson is the godfather to his first grandchild.

Eastland is also the lead attorney for a defense team seeking to overturn Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman’s conviction last year of bribery and other charges in a government corruption case.

The CBS show “60 Minutes” interviewed Eastland recently as part of a planned piece about Siegelman.

Ooo-wee, got popcorn? TWO of my fascinations in one! Y’all teevy-watchers be sure to holler at me on the Sunday you see ‘em “tease” this edition of 60Min, okay?

Meanwhile, Hiram gets quoted in Anita Lee’s story for the Sun-Herald today too:

Hiram Eastland Jr. of Jackson, attorney for defendant Steve Patterson, said Thursday he had just received a second shipment of evidence he still has to review. What he previously reviewed, Eastland said, indicates “there’s not evidence that (Patterson) agreed to conspire to bribe a judge, much less anyone else. I think it’s safe to say that applies to the others as well.”

(Let’s listen to hear whether he sings in the same major key after reviewing the new batch.)

folo’s Who’s Who in Pakistan

UPDATED BELOW

As promised, here is Folo’s Back-of-the-Envelope Cheatsheet on a Few of the Playahs in Pakistan — AFTER I thank Cujo359 and riddenword for their excellent contributions to the previous post. The September 2007 Mash post that Cujo links is extremely good for this purpose too. (Scruggsians, hang on –our dessert after this nutritious spinach will be Hiram Eastland . . . )

I fought to keep these thumbnails as brief as possible, but if you want to know more about any particular name, just plug it into folo’s Search box for further background (in some cases, more than you can say grace over) . . .

Benazir Bhutto

Assassinated yesterday at age 54 — I cannot believe without some level of government, though possibly not leadership, collusion — Bhutto was twice Pakistan’s prime minister (and would have been almost-certainly elected again if the voting set for two weeks hence had been untampered-with — as was unlikely). She was the Harvard (in those days, Radcliffe)- and Oxford-educated and groomed-for-national-leadership daughter of President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was himself ousted and hanged in a military coup 19 years ago. Her two brothers were later killed (one in police custody during her time in office — draw your own conclusions), and her husband spent eight years in jail for corruption thereafter. Two teenaged daughters and a son also survive her. Though tossed out of the PMship twice (yep, corruption), she recently returned from exile — with heavy U.S. help — to become the Pakistani middle class’s leading voice for democracy. Her Pakistan People’s Party, though a feudal Bhutto-family preserve, is the largest in the country; what comes of it now — it was ALL about Benazir — is anybody’s guess. May she and those who died with her, all but one, rest in peace.

Pervez Musharraf

Military dictator since a coup in 1999, Musharraf easily snowed George W. Bush but is despised by most Pakistanis — and was even before his November 3 declaration of a state of emergency (which actually amounted to martial law), when he suspended the constitution, fired the supreme court and hundreds of other judges, and silenced non-government media. When Nawaz Sharif (see below) tried to return from exile earlier this fall, Musharraf put him on the next plane out, but Bush gave him no choice but to accept Bhutto’s return, and things have accelerated toward hell ever since. Lawyers and students have done most of the visible demonstrating against him, but he’s roundly hated (not least as Bush’s puppet) by almost all Pakistanis. He’s actually been a much more effective protector than opponent to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Far from as smart as he needs to be for what he’s trying to pull off.

Nawaz Sharif

As Pakistan’s nationalist and religiously-conservative prime minister in the 90s, Sharif helped the Taliban flourish in both his country and Afghanistan and ignored urgent international pleas not to test Pakistan’s nukes. He was ousted by the military when he tried to refuse landing to a passenger-packed-but-low-on-fuel civilian airliner carrying then-Army Chief of Staff Musharraf. He and Benazir Bhutto pretty-near hated each other but made common cause against the dictator. Sharif wanted to boycott the upcoming elections but couldn’t get her to agree; now he says it’s back to Plan A. His main international backer is Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who hosted his recent eight-year exile. Feudal and not very impressive, he will, if he gets into office again, be bad news for all but the religious right and his family and cronies.

On the killing of Benazir Bhutto

UPDATED BELOW

I’ve been trying to process my shock (as opposed to surprise) at the murder of Benazir Bhutto, and also trying to shake the slight haunting I now feel in rereading my own words of six weeks ago. Also been checking on others’ reactions to the assassination, and this morning I watched GWB “strongly condemn” what’s happened, then zoom off stage-right in a veritable flash — though not before I gasped at how he’s aged since my last good look at him.

Does he feel bad for having sent Benazir Bhutto home to her death? I have trouble imagining such a thing as “George W. Bush’s conscience,” and certainly there was no trace of one in his aspect this morning. But as I described two months ago, he pulled out many stops to get her back into Pakistan from eight years in exile. Thought he needed her there to prop up his boy Perve — before he suffered another bout of the patented Bushian “who could have imagined” once she arrived.

In an excellent multi-focused post this morning at Harper’s, Scott Horton had this to say about where the Bhutto killing leaves us:

News is now breaking about the attempt to assassinate Nawaz Sharif and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi. Most Pakistan observers I have been speaking with envision a dramatic further deterioration in Pakistan, largely the result of Musharraf’s decision to trash restructuring plans in favor of military rule. The assassination of Bhutto, whose Pakistan People’s Party had the loyalty and support of the nation’s aspiring middle class, is a tragic development and it presages still more instability. Condoleeza Rice and her senior advisors correctly understood that forcing Bhutto into a marriage of convenience with Musharraf was the only available tactic that would shore up and legitimize the general’s rule. Unfortunately they acted too late on this, and in the end their resolve was characteristically weak. Musharraf saw the writing on the wall, and he recognized that the real say in the Cheney Shogunate is held by Dick Cheney, not Condi Rice. So Musharraf welched on his promises and sent Pakistan spiraling down the maelstrom in which it now finds itself. This is more bitter fruit from America’s grossly mismanaged foreign policy in the age of Bush. More to come.

Yes, but what more to come? “The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a severe, and potentially crippling, blow to international hopes that Pakistan might emerge into a state of stability,” Paul Reynolds of the BBC begins his analysis,

The risks of Pakistan imploding have once again increased.

It is a further setback for the US “war on terror”, which has as part of its strategy in the region the restoration of democracy in Pakistan to offer an alternative path, away from militancy and extremism.

The strategy is very much at risk. …

Benazir Bhutto killed

NYT

WaPo

ToL

BBC

Dawn’s website seems to have crashed, but try back later.

I think this was inevitable. God help Pakistan — and all of us — now.

lotus