NMissCommentor

Today, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that they were going to explicitly remove Judge DeLaughter, and refused to grant the Judicial Performance Commission’s motion to dismiss its proceeding against DeLaughter, a motion based on DeLaughter’s resignation from the bench at the time of his guilty plea.
The majority thinks that this particular case doesn’t just require [...]

What remains of Wilson v. Scruggs is in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.  As I’ve posted earlier, Wilson has settled with Scruggs and Langston but continues to pursue Patterson, Peters, and Balducci (the last filed a pleading admitting liability but asserting other defendants were primarily liable).  The case is before [...]

A quick read of the opinion granting summary judgment for Hood shows that the basis is that Hood had the authority to hire outside counsel and that, because MCI paid the money, there’s not a legal issue about the legislature appropriating. From Sid Salter’s blog:

http://www.clarionledger.com/assets/pdf/D0152201219.PDF

Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd has ruled against State [...]

Two stories that might be of interest to folks following the Scruggs case.  First, Patsy Brumfield writes about the resolution of the case involving Ed Peters’s “fee.”
The second is a tad more obscure, and I’ll present it in the form of a Scruggs trivia question:  The discrimination claims of Black farmers against the Agriculture Department [...]

Recall that the first substantial public evidence that Ed Peters had “come in” and become to some degree a government witness was a forfeiture action filed between Christmas and New Years in 2008, in which the Government alleged that he had surrendered to them $425,000 that remained of his million dollar fee for helping Joey [...]

Paul Quinn reported in yesterday’s Oxford Enterprise (not available online??):
Just a few months after finally reaching a settlement with Dickie Scruggs in a lawsuit stretching back 15 years, attorney William Roberts Wilson has moved into the office space that once housed his nemesis’ law firm on Oxford’s Square.
“Ever since watching ‘Intruder in [...]

A Clarion Ledger article about Jim Hood and lawsuits filed by Jim Hood on behalf of the state involving contracts with outside attorneys focuses on the political issue (“pay to play”) to the point of sacrificing telling the story with any clarity.  Allowing the story to be framed by the politics of attacking Jim Hood [...]

The Clarion Ledger had an article about the question of whether the SD Mississippi U.S. Attorney has been recused in the Minor case, prompted by a filing by assistants down there relating to Judge Teel, one of the defendants.
Officials in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Mississippi have repeatedly said the [...]

The photo above, by Eli Williams for the Oxford Enterprise, of Hal Neilson leaving his arraignment.
Paul Quinn has a story about the Hal Neilson arraignment in yesterday’s Oxford Enterprise and the reports about whether or not he was a whistleblower.  Paul has talked to a lot of different camps– defense lawyers from the Scruggs case, [...]

Last week, the deadline arrived for rehearing petitions in the Paul Minor case.  There had been two extensions of the deadline, one agreed by all parties that bumped it past the first of the year, and a second because of the blizzard in Washington– the Solicitor General had to pass on any en banc petitions, [...]