7 of 52 in my 2011 book blogging challenge.
If you live in Mississippi, have ever lived in Mississippi, or have any interest in passing through Mississippi, you should read The Fall of the House of Zeus.
The book is about Dickie Scruggs, a trial lawyer who hit it big over litigation first involving asbestos and later involving tobacco. And when I say he hit it big, what I mean is the man still collects $20 million a year from tobacco settlements despite the fact that he is in prison. Evidently, big is never big enough. He didn’t simply retire on his enormous wealth after the tobacco years. I’m sure he now regrets that, but he thought he could do it all again with Katrina lawsuits, and somewhere along the way in all of that, he ended up indicted for judicial bribery.
Wilkie, a professor at Ole Miss and a friend of Dickie Scruggs, tells the story of the rise and fall of this extraordinarily powerful and notorious trial lawyer. Quite frankly, I found the whole tale so shocking that I wondered if I should have been reading more John Grisham novels so that I would have had a clearer sense of the corruptions in our legal system. What was most shocking was that by the time the story reached the events that actually sent Scruggs to prison, I didn’t think they were all that bad. They didn’t seem like much compared to the many things he’d done that were evidently not illegal but were certainly unethical in my view.
What’s more, before I read the book, I was certain Scruggs was guilty. After I read it, I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t sure he was really the one who bribed the judge. It seemed like that was more the work of a man who was trying to impress Scruggs than Scruggs himself. Scruggs had no choice but to plead guilty and cut a deal for a reduced prison term in the end, though, because several other people by that time had already plead guilty and in the process implicated him. Which brings me to the part that really bothers me. What the federal investigators did in their efforts to bring down Scruggs also brought down a string of people leading to him, only a couple of whom were clearly guilty in the particular case being investigated. The rest sort of fell into a domino pattern — if one comes down the next one has to as well.
Basically then my impression is that Scruggs made a lot of enemies over the years. He did a lot of things that were clearly unethical but that couldn’t quite be nailed as illegal. Thus, when a case came up where there was a chance to send him to prison the federal investigators went after him in full force. But in doing so they entrapped so many people that their actions were just as bad as his in the end.
And I haven’t even gotten into the connection to Trent Lott yet. Lott and Scruggs are brothers-in-law. Part of the accusations against Scruggs claimed that he attempted to influence judges by promising them a leg up toward a federal appointment. Lott resigned from the US Senate only days before Scruggs was indicted. Lott denies any connection to the Scruggs case, but it sure does add a whole new level of intrigue to the story to contemplate who might have tipped him off, blackmailed him, or whatever to move him out of the way of the investigations at the very last minute.
All in all, I’m disillusioned with our legal system after reading this book. You like to think that justice actually matters in the courts, but you come away from this story realizing that what matters all too often is not who is right but who has manipulated the system to the best advantage. It’s about how much money has changed hands. It’s about who has formed political alliances with whom. It’s about what kind of deals were cut on the side.
And don’t even get me started on Ole Miss fraternities. This book leaves you with the impression that every man who has any power whatsoever in Mississippi established that power in the first place in a fraternity house at Ole Miss. They were all fraternity brothers. Trent Lott spent his entire political career staffing Washington with people from his fraternity. I knew we operated by the good ole boy system around here, but I was appalled to learn the extent to which this is true.
The Fall of the House of Zeus is a non-fiction, journalism-style book about politics and the legal system and one particular legal crime. I read it because it is about something that happened in my home state, and I thought I ought to read it. I didn’t expect to particularly enjoy it, but I was completely absorbed by it. I couldn’t put it down. When we discussed it at my book club, that was the general consensus. We just couldn’t put it down.
Of course it is more interesting to people from Mississippi. We recognize people and places. We remember the events even if we didn’t know at the time what was going on behind the scenes. I don’t think you have to be from Mississippi to find this book fascinating, though. Nor do you have to be from here to leave the story feeling equally disillusioned.
After all, if power plays of the magnitude described by Curtis Wilkie are happening in the poorest state in the country, just imagine what must be happening everywhere else. Just imagine.
