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We would like to have a link to this story so our readers could view the same letters four journalists and an attorney/blogger plowed through Wednesday in the criminal case against attorney Dickie Scruggs.
Federal Judge Neal B. Biggers Jr. stood up for public access when he granted our right to view them because they were written to influence the prison sentence he is expected to impose on Scruggs on Friday for conspiring to bribe a state court judge.
Such letters are written to the judge and not made a part of the court file. We've asked for them in other cases and did so again. It never hurts to ask, right?
The judge even recognized times are changing when he granted access not only to traditional media, but also to Oxford attorney and blogger Tom Freeland IV, better known as NMC (North Mississippi Commentator) on folo.us.
Still, we found ourselves unable to take advantage of technology we have a hard time living without: No cellular phones or Internet-connection devices were allowed in the courthouse.
We had to run outside to file updates with our editors/Web site. The security guards felt sorry for me because I filed the first two updates seated on the concrete, squinting to see my computer screen in the sun.
And then there was the matter of copying the letters.
We had a plan.
We had hoped to copy the letters, get them scanned and e-mailed to the Coast at an office service company and put them online.
No copying, the judge said. What the judge says goes.
Someone from the court clerk's office was assigned to baby-sit us at all times, as we typed away on laptops in a witness room. We had to sign in and out. I forgot several times but was not arrested.
One of the women who works in the clerk's office came in to take our picture.
I asked why. She said, "It's history."
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