The Northern Review

It is interesting and perhaps telling that the bribe was proposed by a Mississippi judge. A judge who was earwigged by a close friend. A judge who then took his friend into his confidence and then, when the friend was hitting rock bottom financially and emotionally, proposed that his friend pay him a bribe - $40,000. Obliging, the friend, and then caught accepting the judge’s proposed bribe of himself, proceeded to entrap his friends into the bribe in order to lighten the load he and his mentor judge had put on his life. There is much more to this sad tale than the shortcomings of Richard Scruggs, Sidney Backstrom and Zachary Scruggs.