Mississippi Law

This is an open forum for discussing Mississippi Law, Legislation, Politics, and Government. Any aspect of the above are fair game, and no idea is too radical.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Dickie Scruggs wants to keep his license

As the Clarion Ledger reported yesterday, Dickie Scruggs of movie and lawyering fame and now infamy is fighting the suspension of his bar license after his pleading guilty to attempting to bribe a judge. On the cover this seems to be crazy in that he pled guilty to a felony but I actually agree with Scruggs on this one.

Scruggs beef is that he actually hasn't been convicted yet, and until the plea is accepted and he is actually convicted then let him keep the license. This is further confused by the fact that some of the parties in this bribery scandal have voluntarily turned in their licenses.

If I was to guess this is a move by Scruggs that is two-fold. It is first an attempt to try and squeeze a little more money out of his law practice before it gets shuttered. On this I can't blame him because he has already been destroyed publicly, why not try and squeeze out a little more green. Second I can see Scruggs doing this because the plea hasn't been accepted and if the judge wants a different deal then loosing his license would take one less bargaining chip away from Scruggs.

Also in a less likely scenario I think Scruggs might do this just for the fact that he wants to stick it to the bar which he probably feels like turned on him and he doesn't want to play nice with anyone. I'm not saying this is the plausible idea but it is possible.

The Mississippi general elections are now set

After run-off victories by Gregg Harper in the GOP 3rd District race and Travis Childer (D) and Greg Davis (R) in the 1st District race the election ballot has been finalized for the fall, except for that pesky Presidential race.

House of Representatives:
1st: Travis Childers (D) v. Greg Davis (R)
2nd: Bennie Thompson (D) - i v. Richard Cook (R)
3rd: Joel Gill (D) v. Gregg Harper (R)
4th: Gene Taylor (D) - i v. John McCay III (R)

Senate: Thad Cochran (R) - i v. Erik Fleming (D)

In my opinion all 3 of the incumbents have an easy path to victory and Gregg Harper in District 3 will probably have an easy time. The race I find most interesting is Childers v. Davis in the First. While the 1st district is a fairly Republican stronghold both party's races went into a run-off showing that all the Republicans are not on the same page and depending on the Presidential race a strong Democratic showing might be enough to squeak out this race for the Democrats in a seat that has been held by a Democrat for over 120 years (until Wicker's victory in 1995). However, DeSoto County, a Republican stronghold has been over the last decade one of the fastest growing counties in the nation so it might be interesting.