Dickie an’ them won’t enjoy the Sunday papers

Somewhere between

How does it feel to be the nation’s Champion of the Little Man and fall so far you will lose your right to practice law and go to prison?

That question was in my mind Friday as I watched Oxford’s most famous lawyer, Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, plead guilty to conspiring to do the worst thing a lawyer can do - bribe a judge.

My second thought was this: The blood is in the water and you are just facing the precipice. The fall is still before you.

That’s because, frankly, the legal troubles of Dickie Scruggs have just begun. …

and

… Perhaps co-defendant Steve Patterson, a former state auditor, comes out of this better than anybody else. The government admits he was a minor player, he had no law license to lose and he still remembers where all the political bodies are buried.

If the goes to jail at all, he can come right back out and work as a lobbyist. His clients won’t care about the rest of it.

. . . I bet you’ll want to read all of Patsy Brumfield this morning.

Per usual, Jerry Mitchell turns in less impressive work (though he does interview John Jones, Bill Kirksey, and Vicki Slater).

WLOX has Alwyn Luckey’s and Steve Funderburg’s reactions.

And the AP has picked up Alyssa Schnugg’s (updated) story of the Darron Minor DUI-manslaughter case Balducci proposed to finesse by going halfsies with Judge Lackey on the defense-attorney fee.

lotus