Rove Racket Victim Sues Ex-U.S. Attorney in Mississippi

Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr. and his wife are suing former U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton of the Southern District of Mississippi for invasion of privacy and last month they won a major decision in the case.

Lampton became a high priest in the Rove Republican Racket after he had targeted and prosecuted Diaz not once but twice, and lost both times. Diaz, a prominent Democrat, has since sought justice against Lampton personal vendetta against him.

Coincidentally, Lampton was going to be fired by the Bush administration in 2005 but saved his scalp when he started targeting and prosecuting Democrats.

In this case, after losing both trials, Lampton foolishly handed over Diaz's confidential and personal income taxes to a state commission, where Lampton's cousin worked.

The Sun Herald reports:

Dunn Lampton’s former position as a U.S. attorney does not give him immunity from a lawsuit in which former state Supreme Court Judge Oliver Diaz Jr. and his wife, Jennifer, accuse Lampton of invading their privacy and disclosing confidential information, a federal judge has ruled. “The times that someone has been allowed to sue a U.S. attorney in the history of the United States are extremely rare, and this is one of them,” Diaz said Thursday. Dunn Lampton had asked that the lawsuit against him be thrown out because federal prosecutors have immunity from prosecution. U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan denied his request. Jordan found a criminal investigation of Diaz had ended, and Lampton was acting outside the scope of his prosecutor’s job, when the alleged misdeeds occurred.

[After losing his criminal case against Diaz,] Lampton then filed a complaint against Diaz with the state’s Judicial Performance Commission. The Diazes allege he gave the commission confidential tax records the U.S. Attorney’s Office had secured during the criminal investigation. Leslie Lampton, Dunn Lampton’s cousin, served on the commission and was involved in the investigation. When the Diazes learned the commission had their tax records, they requested the documents be returned. Commission attorney Darlene Ballard instead sent the records back to Lampton. The commission complaint against the Diazes was dismissed in December 2008.

“In the present case, (Dunn) Lampton provided the tax records to the commission after Diaz was acquitted,” Jordan wrote in his order. “The prosecution was over; the conduct was neither part of his prosecutorial function nor part of his role as an advocate.”