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Scruggs and PL Blake

May 24th, 2009 · Mississippi, PL Blake, Richard Scruggs

What is known?  Scruggs worked on PL Blake’s bankruptcy in the 80’s.  While the asbestos cases were going on in Mississippi he “loaned” money to Blake.  The money may have come from the Scruggs involvement in the Asbestos Group litigation.  Blake had his ear to the ground.  He mainly knew state of Mississippi politics.  Scruggs says Blake was involved in the question of “tort reform” in Mississippi.  There is mention of backroom doings.

Now I think of the backroom doings of Ed Peters and the Scruggs II matter where Ed Peters was to receive a good some of money from Joey Langston and Tim Balducci for influencing his friend Judge Bobby DeLaughter in a fee dispute in the asbestos cases.

Just what, exactly, was PL Blake up to in Mississippi in the 80’s and 90’s?

Sources — some:  Scruggs Testimony at the Lucky Trial.  More transcripts to study can be found at this Rossmiller Post.

A word comes to mind - earwiggng.

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Power in Mississippi — Black and White

May 23rd, 2009 · Black Mississippi, Mississippi, White Mississippi

The story about Richard Scruggs and the apparatchiks and power players surrounding him is most probably a study of power.  Apart from weather, the great drama of nature in Mississippi in the last two centuries has been the drama of power between and among Black and White.

Mississippi is about 62% White and 37% Black.  Yet in the Delta region and especially the cities of Greenville and Greenwood the demographic ratio is 70% Black and 29%.  This is so despite the extent the White population of these cities and the Delta play a dominant role in the politics of power in Mississippi.

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Fanny Lou Hamer

May 22nd, 2009 · Mississippi

On July 22, 1964, Fanny Lou Hamer, introduced herself to the National Democratic Convention:

Mr. Chairman, and the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.

On her way home from meetings in South Carolina, Mrs. Hamer and her traveling companions were arrested in Winona, Mississippi.  The arrest was false and they were physically beaten.  She and her friends were relased three days laater.  Wikipedia.

Ruleville is only a few miles to the north west of Greenwood, the home of PL Blake at the time.

Senator Eastland was a supporter of White Supremacy.  And, an opponent of the Civil Rights Movement.  When President Lyndon Johnson called Senator Eastland:

When three civil rights workers Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman went missing in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, he reportedly told President Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and there was no Ku Klux Klan in the state, surmising that the three had gone to Chicago:[1]

Johnson: Jim, we’ve got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?

Eastland: Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe there’s . . . I don’t believe there’s three missing.

Johnson: We’ve got their parents down here.

Eastland: I believe it’s a publicity stunt. . . .

>Wikepedia

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The PLB Era: Marion Wright Edelman

May 21st, 2009 · Mississippi, PL Blake

In 1965 PL Blake was getting his business going in and about Greenwood, Mississippi.  Not too far away in Jackson, Marion Wright was just beginning her legal career.  She was the first first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi state bar.  About.  In the early 1960’s she worked as a student on a project to register Black Americans in Mississippi to vote.  After her graduation from Yale Law School and a stint in New York City working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she moved to Jackson and worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund there.  She became a member of the Mississippi Bar Association on November 12, 1965.

She met Peter Edelman while he was with Robert F. Kennedy when the Senator was visiting impoverished people in the Mississippi Delta.  They married and moved to Washington D.C.  Wikipedia. In 1968-69 Mrs. Edelman formed the Washington Research Project along with Richard B. Sobol, Harry Huge, and Ruby Martin and later Rick Seymour.

More on Richard Sobol.

More about these people as time goes.

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Judge Henry Lackey: Entrapment - Judge Lackey sought the bribe.

May 20th, 2009 · PL Blake

As far as one can tell the only reason why PL Blake is involved in the Scruggs Matter is that his name has been mentioned by Tim Balducci in grand jury testimony and with respect of the Lackey Matter (Scruggs I).  It must be remembered that the so-called bribe came from Judge Lackey.  Judge Lackey offered to be bribed for $40,000.  He invited the bribe.  P.L. Blake had nothing to do Judge Lackey’s desire to be paid $40,000 by Tim Balducci. 

It turns out Judge Lackey was a “government agent.”  Since when do state circuit judges have authority under state law to act as agents for law enforcement agencies?  There is much more to the concern.  Suffice it to say, one would expect one defending PL Blake, if an indictment comes down, to look into the unconstitutional aspects of the  Judge Lackey as Government Agent Entrapment.  See this earlier post.  There is more on the topic if one just searches under “entrapment.”

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PL Blake and J.P. Coleman and the Eastland Family

May 18th, 2009 · PL Blake

The Sun Herald has an article by Anita Lee on January 21, 2008 telling us a bit more about PL Blake:

A man who remains somewhat of a mystery, former Delta farmer P.L. Blake, is also part of the mix. The Scruggs team earned around $1 billion suing tobacco companies, and although Scruggs has fought sharing his fees in this and other cases with some attorneys, he had no qualms about agreeing to pay Blake $50 million over 20 years for work that led to a multistate settlement of tobacco litigation.

Litigation against Big Tobacco in the mid to late 90s was a legal and political minefield. Scruggs and Moore have said Blake had an inside track on the politics. Blake has explained he simply clipped newspaper articles, watched C-SPAN and tried to gauge the political winds for Scruggs.

Patterson’s attorney, Hiram Eastland Jr., 57, said as a young boy he frequently encountered the older Blake on the Eastland plantation in Doddsville. Eastland described Blake as a quiet and gentlemanly fellow, always with a crisp crease in his khakis.

Former Gov. J.P. Coleman [Wikipedia]thought of Blake as a son, Eastland said. Eastland’s father, Hiram “Chester” Sr., and Chester Eastland’s first cousin, powerful U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, were friends to Blake. Young Hiram Jr. said his father and the senator didn’t drink coffee, but kept a pot brewing on the plantation for Blake’s visits.

Blake also happens to be close friends not only with Scruggs, but with Steve Patterson, a fellow horse-breeding enthusiast. Scruggs and Patterson trust Blake implicitly, court records show.

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PL Blake and the New York Times

May 18th, 2009 · Uncategorized

This article in the New York Times by Nelson D. Schwartz is of interest — The Legal Trail in a Delta Drama, January 20, 2008.

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Pete Perry and the PL Blake File

May 18th, 2009 · Uncategorized

From a story by Bill Minor in the Desoto Times Tribune in on October 16, 2008 – USDA boss Walters has checkered past — we find this:

Another, Pete Perry, was fired in 1983 after numerous complaints about his management. Months after his departure, Perry was discovered by a longtime employee prowling through the agency’s files on a Sunday night. It was later learned Perry had never turned in all his keys when he left the job. Somehow, no criminal or disciplinary action was ever taken by the USDA.

What adds a weird dimension to Perry’s Sunday night escapade is that on a desk was found an open file of P.L. Blake, a large-scale agricultural operator from Greenwood who was then a target in a federal investigation into a Texas-based multi-million dollar farm loan scandal. Blake escaped any penalty in that case but several years later was nailed on a federal charge and fined for giving false information on a Mississippi bank loan.

Yes, this is the same P.L. Blake whose name surfaced earlier this year in the bizarre judicial bribery downfall of famed trial attorney Dickie Scruggs. Blake, evidence in the Scruggs prosecution had shown, was paid $10 million by Scruggs and promised up to $50 million to “keep his ear to the ground” and clip news stories (huh?) during Scruggs’ management of lawsuits that recovered the multi-billion dollar damages against tobacco companies.

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PL Blake and the $50 Million: Did he spread it around?

May 18th, 2009 · Uncategorized

This post is pure mental speculation. One might imagine PL Blake might have been spreading money around from the $50 million he was and is being paid in installments for his political/litigation efforts. One thinks a bit of the story line regarding the campaign lobbyist characters in John Grisham’s The Appeal (2008).

In the Scruggs - Lackey matter it does not seem one could say that Mr. Blake was spreading money around.

Why? It is very simple. If he was spreading money around why would he have been involved in conversations in which the $40,000 Lackey requested bribe was to be paid by Scruggs? He would not have, he would have just paid it himself. But he didn’t. And, any overtures by Balducci regarding the amount would not have involved Scruggs, but they did. Thus, by this event one could not say Mr. Blake was acting as a bagman.

But, one does wonder anew about the extent and customs of earwigging in Mississippi. Seems a bit reasonable.

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Tom Anderson and Dick Scruggs

May 18th, 2009 · Uncategorized

A little over a year ago, NMC (Tom Freeland) on FOLO reported that Richard Scruggs had paid for over half of million dollars in campaign advertising for Tom Freeland in his campaign against George Dale for congress in Mississippi. See the March 2008 FOLO entry.

Here is Mr. Freeland’s summary of some of the Tim Balducci grand jury testimony:

Patterson and Balducci went to meet Scruggs about the Anderson campaign, in which Scruggs had invested a half million dollars for t.v. commercials and print ads to beat George Dale, and when they went in, “Mr. Scruggs unsolicited said I’ve already alked to P.L. and I know Steve you’ve talked to P.L. and I just want you to know that everything’s okay. Y’all go ahead and get it done, and you’re covered.”

Balducci Testimony from FOLO.

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