NMissCommentor

With yesterday the motions deadline in his case, Judge DeLaughter filed a series of motions.  There’s some news in them.

404(b) is a Federal Rule of Evidence that allows the prosecution to prove other crime evidence, to show motive, or (essentially) to rebut any argument by the defense that he or she didn’t ever do that sort of thing.  A motion to make the Government immediately disclose 404(b) evidence states:

While the government has orally indicated to counsel that it may seek to attempt to  introduce 404(b) evidence with respect to matters purportedly occurring in the Hinds Circuit  court case of Eaton Corp, et al., v. Robert D. Frisby, et al., no formal notice or materials have been provided.

Eaton is one of the three cases the Judicial Performance Commission cited in its petition to suspend DeLaughter from the bench, and is another case with allegations that Ed Peters was working “off the books” in cases involving DeLaughter.  Here’s the 404b motion.

In a motion for early disclosure of the grand jury material (under the Jencks act (18 U.S.C. §3500, which is why the motion calls this §3500 material), the prosecution has to give the defense grand jury testimony in federal court early enough to use in cross, although sometimes “early enough” seems to be like this: “Prosecutor: ‘No further questions. Oh, here’s the grand jury testimony, counsel.”), Judge DeLaughter argues that the complexity of the Wilson case, the contradictions between the various accounts put forth by various government witnesses, and Peters’s answer in the federal court Wilson v. Scruggs denying he’d done everything wrong all point toward a need that defense counsel have this material now rather than later in order to mount a successful defense.  Don’t skip the footnotes, or you’ll miss phrases like “the crafty Ed Peters” being “clever and wily enough…”

The very real possibility that the crafty Peters was clever and wily enough to correctly guess how his  protégé, DeLaughter, might rule on the merits should not escape anyone’s attention either.  This possibility is enhanced by the undisputed fact that DeLaughter received not penny,

Here’s the Jencks motion.

DeLaughter also filed a motion for an additional fourteen days within which to file motions.  The motion notes that his cocounsel, a lawyer at Jones, Day in San Francisco, has been since early June caught up in a criminal trial in New York. It also says:

2. The government just last week or early this week was able to ship the entire court file in the underlying Hinds County civil case of Wilson v. Scruggs, to attorney Cline in San Francisco. In addition, AUSA Bob Norman was travelling to Tupelo late this week to review the FBI’s complete file in order to complete its Rule 16 obligations and other discovery matters upon which counsel have be able to agree.

3. In addition, it has recently come to undersigned counsel’s attention based upon prejudicial articles published in the Jackson Clarion Ledger, that further irregularities may well have occurred in the conduct and supervision of the grand jury in this matter.  See, Defendant DeLaughter’s Motion for Inspection of Grand Jury Minutes, previously filed on March 26, 2009,  which the parties have requested that the Court defer ruling.  These articles point to the issue of  whether the grand jury could be said to have been improperly used for civil investigative purposes in the Hinds County civil matter of Eaton Corp, et al., v. Robert D. Frisby, et al., is  something that requires further investigation before it can be adequately addressed and  presented.  As such, counsel would again ask the Court to defer ruling on the motion for inspection of the grand jury minutes as it may well yet be supplemented and modified.

Here’s the motion extend motion deadlines.

And, to quote the man with the vegematic:  “Wait! There’s more!”

DeLaughter also filed a motion demanding disclosure of Brady and related material (that is, material favorable to the defendant), which Judge DeLaughter has a constitutional right to have.  Here’s the Brady motion.  Finally, he filed a motion for a district wide venire and for a jury questionaire.  The Government does not oppose it. In addition to seeking a change of venue to another state (which didn’t work), Dickie Scruggs sought a juror questionaire.  Judge Biggers in that case granted a district wide venire and a questionaire, but stated from the bench he was substantially modifying the one that Scruggs proposed.  I never saw the final one.  Here’s that jury motion Judge DeLaughter filed.