NEW ORLEANS (AP) A former Mississippi attorney asked a federal appeals court Monday to vacate his 2008 guilty plea in a judicial bribery case that also resulted in a prison sentence for his once-powerful father and law partner, plaintiffs' lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans didn't immediately rule after hearing arguments in the case against Zach Scruggs, who served a 14-month prison sentence, lost his law license and paid a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to misprision of a felony, or failing to report a crime. Scruggs argues that his guilty plea should be thrown out because his conduct didn't constitute a crime in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 ruling that an anti-fraud law was improperly used to help convict former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling. Scruggs pleaded guilty to failing to report an "earwigging" conspiracy to improperly influence a judge, in this case for a favorable ruling in a dispute with other lawyers over $26.5 million in fees. Scruggs, however, claims he didn't know the plot would include paying bribes to Circuit Judge Henry Lackey, who was cooperating with federal authorities. Scruggs' attorney, Edward Robertson Jr., argued that the Supreme Court's ruling in the Skilling case means that merely "earwigging" a judge, while unethical, is not a federal crime. "It would be news to the law that you can be guilty of misprision of a non-felony," Robertson said. "It would also be news that Skilling does not apply retroactively." Assistant U.S. Attorney John Alexander said the evidence showed Zach Scruggs knew about the bribery plot. "The entire record should be looked at," Alexander said. "He had a chance to show he was actually innocent and failed to do so. That's our case." Scruggs is appealing a 2011 ruling by U.S. District Judge Neal B. Biggers Jr., who concluded that a reasonable juror could find that Scruggs knew about the bribery scheme "and helped to interpret and revise the bought order." Biggers cited an FBI recording of an eight-minute-long conversation on Nov. 1, 2007, between Scruggs and two other people at The Scruggs Law Firm's offices in Oxford, Miss.
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