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• Scruggs Gets Maximum 5 Years for Judge Bribe Attempt (Update3) 

Richard ``Dickie'' Scruggs, the Mississippi lawyer who spearheaded legal settlements with tobacco firms that provided $206 billion to 46 U.S. states, was sentenced to the maximum five years in prison for trying to bribe a judge.

Scruggs, 62, whose firm made hundreds of millions of dollars on the tobacco cases, pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to pay a $40,000 bribe to a state judge. That judge handled a lawsuit on how to divide $26.5 million in legal fees from an $89 million settlement with State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. over claims from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

``You committed a reprehensible crime in my opinion, the most reprehensible crime a lawyer can commit, which is the corruption of a judge,'' said U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers today at a hearing in federal court in Oxford, Mississippi. ``The justice system made you a rich man, and yet you attempted to corrupt it.'' . . .

Biggers suggested Scruggs might reduce his term if he cooperates with prosecutors probing payments to non-lawyers in tobacco-fee litigation.

Scruggs may know ``where a lot of bodies are buried,'' Biggers said. ``If you uncover some of those bodies, it might help you in the future.''

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