P.L. Blake and the Tobacco Litigation? Guess Not.

Here is a short piece about P.L Blake's supposed entry in the public discussion about the Scruggs I matter. Anita Lee, Journalist. Of the Sun Herald. I note the piece says something to the effect that Mr. Blake is not being looked at regarding the "tobacco litigation." That's a little hard to believe. Just what did he do for the $50 million he is being paid? And, for some reason some of the fiction in John Grisham's The Appeal come to mind.

Carl Orff and Betrayal

We learn this week that Carl Orff the composer of the famed Carmina Burana was a man who betrayed a friend. One could say he really did not betray is friend, merely did not come to his aid. The friend, Kurt Huber was a found of the Munich unit of an anti-Nazi resistance group during he war called "The White Rose." Kurt Huber was arrested by the Gestapo. His wife asked Orff to intervene. He refused choosing to protect himself. Huber was later hung by the Gestapo.

After the war, in order to establish himself as a candidate for de-nazification, Orff told a United States intelligence officer, a man named "Jenkins that he had co-founded Die Weisse Rose with his friend, Kurt Huber." Richard Morrison, Carl Orff, the composer who lived a monstrous lie, The Times on Line, December 19, 2008

More Treachery in Mississippi

News is coming from Mississippi telling of the efforts of Joey Langston to help the U.S. Attorney in his efforts regarding the Judge Bobby Delaughter influence matter. Seems Langston and Steve Balducci were engaged in some effort to influence Judge Delaughter using his old friend and mentor Edward Peters. Peters apparently got $1 million. Langston and Balducci pled guilty to some relatively minor charges. Now they are helping the U.S. Attorney gain new indictments against Dick Scruggs, the lawyer, Langston and Balducci were working for.

The matter is a real sorry mess. But, the truly frightening thing for me is this: The legal system uses treachery to gain indictments and convictions. What is the treachery here? It is the apparent fact that Langston using his involvement and perhaps instigation of a wrong of judicial influence and bribery to put his friend and client in jail. The common excuse for this is that government has to make bargains with the devil to bring other devils to justice. This is commonly accepted within our system of "justice."

The principles at work are expressed by the aphorisms used -- law is not about justice, it is war and in war there are no principles, you can only get the bad guy by using the same techniques bad guys use, the guy the government is going after is really a "bad guy," and he deserves no fairness, life is tough, get over it, -- and so it goes.

The real principle at work is this -- the end justifies the means.

So where do we go when this principle reaches into every part of our civilization, our culture. Our culture becomes one based only on the principle of expediency as determined by those in power from time to time.

Do we have to become evil in order to control evil?

Earwigging is Lobbying (And Judicial Corruption)

It seems clear the judicial culture in Mississippi commonly accepted the cultural phenomenon of earwigging. To earwig a judge means to talk privately with a judge about common things between the judge and the talker, to influence, to get a judge to go the way of the earwigger.

Earwigging is lobbying. It is similar to the efforts a lobbyist makes to sway legislator to the lobbyist's point of view. It is private and it is personal. More often than not it does not involve bribery. And, of course it does not have to involve bribery.

A few days ago, a New York lawyer, David Boies, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reporters said this:

I tried some cases before Mississippi state court judges who were just great,and I also tried cases in front of Mississippi judges who were just terrible. There is undoubtedly some real corruption – where a judge does something for money or favors. But I think that is a very small problem in Mississippi, and a tiny problem in most places. The bigger problem is where judges do things because they know the people, because they like the people, because they’re comfortable with the people. That’s a much more difficult thing to get your arms around, partly because its human nature. And the problem’s not unique to Mississippi. [Emphasis added.]

To earwig means, in its essence, to play on the human frailty of liking people whom we think are our friends, people we feel comfortable with, our hunting buddies, our golf buddies, our lawyer group buddies, the "brothers" in those "fraternities" of which we like to think we are a part.

Judicial Corruption in Mississippi?

When you think about it, it is hard to believe a lawyer with the savy of Dick Scruggs would have believed earwigging in Mississippi was "that wrong", that uncommon, or that a sitting state judge and the federal government would use the practice to lead a broken down, out of control lawyer, Tim Balducci, into a bribery sting.

It must have been common knowledge to the lawyers involved, as well as the judge, that earwigging was a common practice. And, that even though a violation of court rule and Rules of Professional Conduct, it was commonly engaged in. Witness Judge Lackey's agreement to enter an order ex parte on behalf of the attorney for the plaintiffs in the Jones Case to seal the file leaving it to be opened at the behest of the attorney who sought the sealing order.

Thus, I think the federal focus now must be to expand the the corruption investigation into the real problem in Mississippi -- corrupt judges and a climate of pervasive political use of the judicial system.

Suffice it to say, I doubt Dick Scruggs would be in the life changing position he is in today were it not for deep problems of judicial corruption in Mississippi.

Is it over?

In a way, the story of the Scruggs Litigation is just beginning.

What might we see unfold if we watch closely? The care of a man for his son and his law partner, the stupidity of Tim Balducci, the arrogance of Joey Langston, the hunger of a Circuit Court Judge to bring his friend to ruin for a bit of fame, the violation of a judge's duties to the bar association, the judiciary, the people of Mississippi, proscutors with vanity license plates advertising their love for a highly dubious Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), and the list goes on and on.

One might conclude there is sin almost everywhere in this case -- lawyers, judges, politicians, law firm employees, insurance companies, tobacco companies, state attorneys general, lawyers and law firms who graze the landscape for poor souls who suffer at the hands and minds of "large" combines and small combines intent on making a buck no matter what the costs to the consumer and the enviroment (but no one really cares about the small combines (no assets and no glory -- read money)).

One would be hard pressed to find anything decent or uplifting in any of this. And, no one seems have enough personal integrity to step back a bit and, well, to bear witness to one's own complicity in the whole business. Yes, I mean complicity.

For now, all of us are home free. Dick Scruggs and Sid Backstrom are going to jail. Hopefully, people will be decent enough to give Zach Scruggs a pass. What one sees here, maybe, is the love of father and of a friend. Quite humbling I would say. Quite commendable.

All of this is very sad. A lot of it is very wrong.

But, what is really wrong, and very sad, is this: The system of law and justice in America has become corrupt. In its very essence, judges, prosecutors and private lawyers are really politicians -- people, who at bottom, exercise power. One gets the impression that law and the rule of law, and the judicial system is more a playground for those who love power than it is a place where the history of the human knowledge of right and wrong is written. Where the litigants and the judges are actually seeking to do real right by their fellows.

Those who use the judicial system as a playground of power are all right with this. They do not know any different. They have not had anyone tell them the human mind and spirit are capable of something which is much better. And, they are too proud, pugnacious and greedy for money and approval to care.

As one gets older, gets very close to end of his life, one sees the truth of the phrase "power corrupts."

Of the many roles played in this tale which may be the most sad from a standpoint of simple humanity -- man to man -- is the part played by Judge Lackey.

I will hold off from saying more -- I think more is to come about Ed Peters, Judge Bobby DeLaughter, Joey Langston and Judge Lackey, the state judge who became a government agent for purposes of putting the sting on Dick Scruggs.

For me, this episode in the history of America leads me to think this: Not one of the players in this sad drama could have read the authors and the books which have told us about ourselves -- Theodore Dreiser (An American Tradgedy), Sinclair Lewis (Babbit), Frank Norris (McTeague), F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) or the New Testament.

The winners and the losers? I wonder. Is there really any difference? Is it possible this whole situation may have a simple and common basis in the desire of people to engage in war and the notion that material things are the primary measure of all things. (Or, maybe, unknowingly fulfill their own versions of the oedipus complex -- but I will save that line of thought for another time.)

Who really knows? I suspect there is something much deeper and simpler playing itself out in the whole Scruggs Litigation Matter. Who really knows? Someone will come closer to understanding and knowing what has really happened as time passes. Maybe.

But, the entire situation may never be known or understood. Like so much we think we know, the real facts, the real attachments of human emotion and motivation, the real truth will be lost to history.

Maybe in waiting we will finally come to know. But, I must say, I doubt it. I doubt it because we go into death and into history seeing the world, always, in the way that suits us best. We live out our lives in our daydreams, diversions. Pascal was right.