Background: Patrick Scruggs allegedly attacks a motorist (Florida Highway Patrol). Inset: Patrick Scruggs (Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office).
A federal prosecutor who once went after Jan. 6 rioters has found himself on the other side of the law — and without access to one of Florida’s most well-known legal defenses.
As Law&Crime has previously reported, Patrick Douglas Scruggs, 38, stands accused of one count each of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, and armed burglary, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. On Sept. 26, 2023, he allegedly encountered a stopped car on the 4.8-mile-long, fixed-link W. Howard Frankland Bridge during the waning minutes of the morning rush hour. After getting out of his car and confronting the driver, who later claimed to have been experiencing a medical event, Scruggs allegedly smashed the stopped driver’s window.
He then allegedly pulled out a “pocket knife” and stabbed the 35-year-old over and over, according to troopers.
Scruggs tried to assert the controversial “Stand Your Ground” defense, which can result in criminal charges being dropped against someone who uses deadly force — if and when they believe their life, or someone else’s life, is in imminent danger or if they reasonably believe they are being threatened with great bodily harm. The law does not require the person using deadly force to retreat, but they must not be committing a crime and must be in a place they have a legal right to be.
Pinellas Circuit Judge Keith Meyer said Friday that the defense doesn’t apply to Scruggs.
“The Court finds that the State has established through clear and convincing evidence that, based on the circumstances as they appeared to the Defendant, a reasonable and prudent person would not have used the same force as the Defendant used,” Meyer said, according to local NBC affiliate WFLA.
Testimony from witnesses shows Scruggs was “acting out of anger and frustration, not in fear,” Meyer wrote in a court order, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
“A reasonable and prudent person, even under the circumstances … would not believe that the use of deadly force was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm or the imminent commission of a forcible felony,” the judge also wrote.
The conflict originated after the 35-year-old victim was found slumped over his driving wheel, blocking some southbound lanes, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Other people stopped at the car, although their actions were decidedly different from what Scruggs allegedly did. Another couple, identified as a 40-year-old man and his 43-year-old wife, stopped just in front of the victim’s car and got out to try to help him, reportedly citing “the hazard” that the stopped car could cause.
Another driver also got out and was looking for something to break the window and help the motorist, according to law enforcement. Just as that was about to happen, however, the driver woke up and jammed on the gas pedal, careening into the helpful couple’s car. Then, the driver tried to maneuver around the car he had just hit by backing up.
That’s when he reversed into Scruggs’ car, the Florida Highway Patrol says, which escalated into the alleged stabbing.
The couple tried to intervene, but Scruggs turned around and allegedly tried to stab them, too. They “both fled before being harmed,” according to the FHP.
Before his 2023 run-in with the law, Scruggs worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. As a federal prosecutor, Scruggs took part in some of the Jan. 6 prosecutions — including being the attorney of record for the government’s initial case against Adam Johnson, the Florida man who made waves by jauntily carrying and posing with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern after joining hundreds of Donald Trump supporters in breaching the Capitol.
Scruggs was an assistant U.S. attorney from September 2012 through April 2023. He served as an attorney in over 500 cases in the Middle District of Florida. In May of that year, he went to work for the national law firm of Barnes & Thornburg LLP, but shortly after the September 2023 incident, he was “no longer employed” with the firm, a representative told Law&Crime.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
