Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has entered an order assigning the Wilson v. Scruggs case that’s in the Northern District of Mississippi to Judge David Hittner, the Senior District Judge for the Southern District of Texas.
The court has also reassigned the case involving the money Ed Peters turned over, U.S. v. $450,00.
Judge Hittner is a Reagan appointee; he’s currently handling the Allen Stanford criminal case, and is the judge that sided with the prosecutors on Stanford’s effort to avoid bail. He’s s 1964 graduate of NYU Law School and practiced in Texas before going on the state bench in the late 70s and then the federal bench in the 80s.
This presumably means that all the district judges in the Northern District have recused themselves. Judge Aycock most recently entered an order that she would recused herself unless everyone waived recusal because her courtroom deputy had been a paralegal in the Wilson law firm during the period involved in the litigation. Judge Biggers had recused himself prior to that because he had pending sealed motions in Scruggs I that he said involved issues that could give him knowledge about Wilson. I’m assuming that Judges Davidson and Mills had similar motions and stepped out for the same reason, leaving only Judge Pepper. Judge Pepper has not drawn any of these cases, leading me to wonder if there is a reason he’s been recused all along.
Here’s the order
Stanford *and* Scruggs? How is any normal judge going to be able to handle those *and* the rest of his docket? He should be granted an extra law clerk.
If he’s anything like Lucius Bunton he should plow through both those cases in no time at all and have plenty of time left over to squeeze in a slip and fall diversity suit to boot . . . .
I think Pepper and Wilson are both Bolivar county natives, and probably close to the same age. Maybe that’s the reason Pepper was never in the mix.