The former Northern District of Mississippi Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs — and recently published a book about it — was honored last week for his work on the high-profile case.
Tom Dawson, who retired in January and returned to the office on an usual contract basis until June, was honored alongside AUSA Bob Norman for their work prosecuting the billionaire tobacco litigator and his associates in a major judicial bribery scandal in Mississippi.
The award from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys cited Dawson and Norman for:
their outstanding work on the investigation and prosecution of United States v. Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, et al. Their unparalleled dedication, skill, and judgment in this highly sensitive case with national attention resulted in convictions of all defendants. The team performed flawlessly, exhibiting extraordinary performance under pressure while executing tactical and strategic decisions in the successful prosecution that exposed a pattern of attempts to influence the judiciary. Their work has made a lasting positive impact on the Mississippi courts, attorneys, and our system of justice
Dawson’s co-author of the book, “Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi,” is Alan Lange, who’s been a vocal conservative critic of trial lawyers on his popular Mississippi blog, Y’all Politics. Lange has called the Scruggs case the “culmination of decades of dirty, backwater politics.” Read Lange’s blog post about the award here.
Read our previous report on Dawson’s book here.
I have read the book and it is dynamite in its’ exposing, clearly, the corruption of these two hoodlums, Dickie Scruggs and Paul Minor. They seemed to think they could live above the law and use it to line their pockets and push people around without any restraint. Apparently they did just that for quite a while but as the saying goes “what goes around comes around” and they have gotten their just rewards for their unjust actions. If the appeals court should, somehow, let Minor off the hook (and I don’t see how they possibly could), it would be one of the greatest tragedies of justice for the century (and I won’t go into the OJ thing) but of that magnitude. Some have said that Minor’s sentence of 11 years was too harsh- I believe it was too soft. He should have had to give up his mega-multimilliions that he made using the system and cheating the people. Now he will just serve his time and have it all there to lavish himself when he gets out. That’s not right.