There are many horrible and corrupt judges in America, but to qualify as the worst judge one must not only
be cruel, callous, cold-hearted, and indifferent to the rights of others, but also corrupt, perverted, unethical,
immoral, unscrupulous, and evil. Judge Henry T. Wingate is all this and more.
ln Wingate's Effiuvium, an unofficial and searingly critical biography of Judge Wingate, a federal district court
judge in Jackson, Mississippi, David G. Atwood, ll, dissects nearly forty years' worth of Wingate's most destructive
and harmful judicial decisions and provides a stunning portrait of a severely disturbed and dangerously tyrannical jurist
bent on the destruction of individual freedoms and basic constitutional rights.
Drawing from firsthand accounts, extensive interviews, thousands of pages of court decisions and Freedom of
lnformation Act disclosures, and Judge Wingate's own words, Wingate's Effluvium delves deep into the life of this
monstrous but cunning figure, chronicling the pivotal events that shaped his life from a poverty-stricken youth in
racially segregated Mississippi to a sycophantic judicial instrument of the far right wing of the Republican Party,
who, after nearly four decades on the bench, has placed America's judicial system and the lives of the most vulnerable
under the sword of Damocles.
ln assiduously spreading his unique and discriminatory form of paleo-conservatism--bordering on Nazi-like
fascism--into all corners of Mississippi society and politics, Judge Wingate has plotted, schemed, and manipulated
the justice system to advance his own ambitions; he has knowingly incarcerated innocent criminal defendants solely
to advance the agenda of the Republican Party; he has methodically dismantled African-Americans' civil rights and
subjected them to systematic racism and discrimination despite being Black himself; he has attempted to silence his
critics with threats of imprisonment, monetary fines, and harassment by federal law enforcement; he has repeatedly
ignored the pleas for justice of those harmed by government abuse; he has protected and condoned the illegal and
violent actions of corrupt police officers; he has been accused of sexually abusing numerous men and women; and
he has refused to apply the laws fairly, impartially, and equally to all citizens regardless of their sex, race, gender,
or political affiliation.
David Atwood, an innocent and abused victim of Judge Wingate's tyranny, has, for almost twenty years, studied,
examined, investigated, and psychoanalyzed nearly every Wingate legal case and judicial decision and has investigated
Judge Wingate's family history, his pseudo education, his military service, and his unremarkable career as a partisan
government attorney. Atwood grippingly narrates this biography and, like a keen prosecutor, builds an impregnable and irrefutable case that Henry T. Wingate is the worst, most despicable federal judge in America.
