Scruggs I: Balducci and Patterson To Be Sentenced Today

In legal terms, it’s been all but a dull week for Mississippi. Apart from Jackson Mayor Frank Melton, Scruggs and Co continue to keep the courts busy. MPB’s Sandra Knispel reports from Oxford.

On Tuesday, former star attorney Dick Scruggs was brought back from federal prison in Kentucky to plead guilty and to be sentenced in a second judicial bribery case. Yesterday, Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment for his role in the same case.

“Judge DeLaughter is charged with participating in a scheme to defraud the citizens of the state of Mississippi of fair and honest services,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Norman.

Today, the curtain is set to come down on the first bribery case with the sentencing of the last two defendants; former New Albany lawyer Timothy Balducci and ex-state auditor Steven Patterson.

“The court is bound only by the statutory maximum of five years and a quarter million dollar fine," said Donald Mason, associate director of the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law at the University of Mississippi, in an earlier MPB interview. "And so I think in both cases the defendants could receive the maximum under the law.”

While Scruggs and DeLaughter are the only two defendants in the second indictment that was unsealed yesterday afternoon, prosecutor Norman made it clear that the bribery scandal is far from over.

“The investigation is definitely ongoing. When you ask will there be other indictments...you know there are lots of legal ramifications. I don’t return indictments. The grand jury does, they’ll decide that," Norman said. "We’ll see.”

Already in court in Aberdeen on Tuesday, prosecutors said that Scruggs had agreed to cooperate in this and other cases.