Scruggs offers to pay expenses for travel to trial

ABERDEEN — Imprisoned former attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs wants to attend a March 26 hearing in Mississippi on his effort to overturn his 2009 conviction in a judicial corruption case involving former Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter.

And, Scruggs said he would pay his own travel expenses.

The hearing will be held in U.S. District Court in Aberdeen.

In court documents, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports Scruggs offers to pay for the direct transport instead of a wheel-and-spokes pattern the federal prison system employs.

His motion says that prosecutors don’t object to the plan.

Scruggs has argued that the limits imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court on so-called honest services fraud mean no juror would today convict him of the crime to which he pleaded guilty.

Scruggs, 65, is being held in federal prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. He’s not projected to get out of jail until 2015, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Scruggs had already been convicted of bribing Lafayette County Circuit Judge Henry Lackey in a separate dispute over legal fees, but the plea in the DeLaughter case added to his prison sentence.