Dickie Scruggs: Witness for the Prosecution

Looks like the famous Mississippi trial lawyer, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, will be appearing this week in a Jackson federal courtroom, not as a lawyer but as a witness for federal prosecutors. Scruggs, best known for his role in orchestrating the state tobacco litigation that brought the cigarette industry to its knees, at least for a while, and for his current role in suing insurance companies over Hurricane Katrina claims, has been given immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony in the bribery trial of his former colleague Paul Minor and two other state court judges.

Scruggs wasn't called in the first trial in which Minor and the judges were acquitted of several of the charges, but he's expected to appear this go around. In theory, his testimony should be interesting, as there were allegations during the first trial that Scruggs was intimately involved in the transactions at the heart of the Minor trial. His personal secretary "supplied a bag of cash" to the now ex-wife of a state court judge running for reelection, according to the woman's interview with FBI agents a few years back, and allegedly Scruggs was trying to round up people willing to serve as "donors" for the money to the judicial campaign.

None of this was ever proved or even elaborated on in the first trial, as Scruggs wasn't prosecuted, and bringing it up would have allowed Minor to argue, as he had in earlier filings, that he was being selectively prosecuted. Scruggs is Republican Senator Trent Lott's brother-in-law and he occasionally gives money to Republicans. But Scruggs is a smart lawyer, and my guess is even if they put him on the stand, he won't have much to say...