Dickie Scruggs in home confinement

Dickie Scruggs, who helped fellow inmates in prison, moves to home confinement

He earned millions and made national headlines suing corporations, but disbarred attorney Dickie Scruggs returned home quietly last week to Oxford, where he will finish a prison sentence under home confinement.

His old friend Mike Moore, a Jackson lawyer who previously served as state attorney general, said officials at a federal prison camp in Montgomery probably hated to see Scruggs go. The high-octane lawyer had been teaching math classes to inmates so they could pass the GED test. In fact, Scruggs earned his certification to teach the classes after he realized inmates were failing the GED because of poor math skills.

“I’m sure Dick’s going to look for some ways to do some good,” Moore said. “He’s always trying to help people.”

Scruggs first made his legal reputation on the Coast. He and his wife, Diane, raised their family in Pascagoula before moving to Oxford, where his law office sat on the town square.

He was in the middle of one of his biggest legal battles, wind vs. water disputes

with insurance companies over Hurricane Katrina damage, when the FBI raided the stately office in 2007.

Scruggs, 67, was sentenced to five years in prison in June 2008 for conspiring to bribe a state court judge in North Mississippi. Son and law partner Zach Scruggs pleaded guilty to a lesser crime in the same case.

SunHerald
3/27/14