Defense asks for documents to reveal more in DeLaughter case
Scruggs’ California attorney Brook Dooley asked the court Tuesday to help the defense retrieve a wide range of materials and information from the FBI and others associated with the government’s case.
He also widens the scope of his request by asking for numerous materials related to the government’s accusations that Scruggs and his lawyer-son Zach, a co-defendant, tried to bribe DeLaughter over another legal-fees case.
Oxford attorney Sidney Backstrom is a co-defendant with them in the Lackey judicial bribery case.
If Dooley gets what he wants, the public may learn much more about what widely cast interviews have gained about the DeLaughter case, including FBI conversations and correspondence with Peters, Langston and U.S. Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott. Lott is Dickie Scruggs’ brother-in-law and allegedly made a call to DeLaughter saying his name had been put forward for a federal judgeship, which the government says was bait in the bribery scheme.
Also requested ‘without limit’ are the names of all people the government asked if they could or would implicate the defendants in any criminal wrongdoing, as well as the names and statement of everybody indicted or not who has “confessed to acts that form the basis for the indictment.”
Among the many documents, statements and reports requested by Dooley is anything the government might have to show that Langston asked co-defendant Timothy Balducci of New Albany to approach the judge for a favorable ruling in the case Jones v. Scruggs.
NE MS Daily Journal
3/11/8
