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Mean Justice, by Edward Humes
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Besieged by murder, rape, and the most vile conspiracies, the all-American town of Bakersfield, California, found its saviors in a band of bold and savvy prosecutors who stepped in to create one of the toughest anti-crime communities in the nation. There was only one problem: many of those who were arrested, tried, and imprisoned were innocent citizens.
In a work as taut and exciting as a suspense novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Edward Humes embarks on a chilling journey to the dark side of the justice system. He reveals the powerful true story of retired high-school principal Pat Dunn's battle to prove his innocence. And how Dunn, prosecuted for killing his wife to inherit her millions, was the victim of a case tainted by hidden witnesses, concealed evidence, and behind-the-scenes lobbying by powerful politicians.
Even more disturbing, Humes demonstrates how the mean justice dispensed in Bakersfield is part of a growing national trend in which innocence has become the unintended casualty of today's war on crime. American cities are enjoying their lowest crime rates in decades. But at what price? Mean Justice provides answers both compelling and frightening.
- Sales Rank: #628550 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Pocket
- Published on: 2003-01-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.75" h x 1.03" w x 4.19" l,
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 688 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
Bakersfield, California, has earned a reputation for being tough on crime. District Attorney Ed Jagels took much of the credit for the incredible conviction rates in Bakersfield courtrooms, from high-profile child molestation ring busts to cases like that of Pat Dunn, a retired high school principal who was found guilty of murdering his wife--despite a disturbing lack of evidence linking him to the crime. Mean Justice tells Dunn's story compellingly, from his childhood in Bakersfield to the trial that would put him away for life. It chronicles his solid belief in justice and authority and his gradual disenfranchisement with the system that railroaded him for reasons that could only be political.
Humes's exhaustive account also covers prosecuting attorney Ed Jagels's rise to political power and influence and the juggernaut of prosecutorial misconduct that caught many others, along with Dunn, in its fury. But it is at its core the horrifying story of an innocent man who had faith in a system that would eventually destroy him. It's not an easy story to digest, and it is apparently not an isolated incident: Humes brings up case after case where seemingly innocent people were arrested, prosecuted, ostracized, and jailed for crimes that may or may not have even occurred. Mean Justice is a gripping and fascinating book that deserves to be read on many counts. --Lisa Higgins
From Publishers Weekly
Humes (No Matter How Loud I Shout, etc.), a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, builds his condemnation of police corruption, prosecutorial misconduct and political pandering around an account of the successful prosecution of an apparently innocent man, Patrick Dunn, for murdering his wife in Kern County, Calif. It's a compelling narrative of a horrifying story. In describing the events surrounding the Dunn prosecution, Humes delves into the sordid history of Kern County, exposing a ruthless D.A.'s office, which conducted the equivalent of a modern-day witch hunt. Kern County, the site of many spurious child-molestation and Satanic ritual-abuse cases, emerges as a crossroads where the worst abuses of psychotherapy meet the worst excesses of rabid law-and-order conservatism. Humes recounts how literally dozens of people in Kern County have had their convictions overturned on appeal based on shocking prosecutorial abuses. The evidence assembled strongly suggests that prosecutors frequently knew of the defendants' innocence. As a result, Humes's exhaustive account of the unscrupulous Dunn prosecution makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dunn was innocent. Humes successfully weaves this story into an overall indictment of the criminal justice system by demonstrating the ease with which police, prosecutors and judges can manipulate the process to convict even the innocent.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A book about an innocent person convicted because of manufactured evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and withheld information is usually fiction. Unfortunately, this is nonfiction. The setting is Kern County, CA, where Patrick Dunn was accused of murdering his wife. The county sheriff and the district attorney built a flimsy case against Dunn, ultimately concocting false information to convict him. Humes, a Pulitzer Prize winner, exposes the Kern County judicial system, where several innocent people have been convicted because of prosecutorial misconduct. The tragedy is that the D.A.'s office is rarely punished?in recent years, convictions have become harder to appeal because of strict guidelines. Humes's taut expose hammers home the difficulty of proving one's innocence after being wrongly convicted. After reading this book, people should have second thoughts about a visit to Kern County.
-?Michael Sawyer, Northwestern Regional Lib., Elkin, NC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Well written, scary if true
By A Customer
Another reviewer recommends the rebuttal of this, and I am more than interested in reading that. The other side of the story is needed here. The facts as presented by Humes are just too disturbing if true.
The defense counsel should have protected and served their client - Dunn - much better. The prosecution is going to get away with whatever they can. Bad lawyer jokes aside, who really believes that lawyers don't play to win. I, for one, don't believe seeking justice is the main goal of a trial.
The jury selection process - always critical - was left out. And Dunn wasn't completely railroaded; he did several stupid things to hurt his cause notwithstanding the lack of forensic evidence. Most cases are decided on circumstantial evidence and defendant behavior matters.
Good book; I just need to see the other side of the story before I render my own final judgement.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Power gone awry
By Amazon Customer
I've been interested in issues of criminal justice, particularly those of the witch hunts of the last several years. You know, there was the McMartin trial, a joke of astronomical proportions. Then there were "recovered memory" cases, and those of the alleged Satanic conspiracies. It seems the Prince of Darkness has emissaries here on earth abducting our kids, eating those he's forced us to abort, and on and on and on. Trouble is, as even senior FBI investigators have admitted, there's no evidence to suggest that these atrocities ever took place. No bodies, no dark rooms, no blood. Hmm. Makes a guy wonder.
Then I talked with an acquaintance who's interested in some of the same subject matter. After our discussion, I looked at Amazon.com and found this volume.
First, allow me to confess that I nearly gave the book four stars. I did so only because there is so much detail as to be almost overwhelming. But then I had to give it five (or more, if it were possible!) The detail is more than necessary for reasons which follow.
The text is ostensibly about the trial of Pat Dunn. He was a former high school principal whose wife died under mysterious circumstances. The prosecutors in Kern County, California, were so zealous that they performed what was the TRUE subject of the book: prosecutorial misconduct. That is, indeed, where the subject digressed from merely Pat Dunn. It seems the law enforcement apparatus of that county has a reputation for being "tough on crime." So tough, alas, that there were countless people going to jail. First that was the massive--yes, Satanic Conspiracy trial. Hundreds were sent to jail for a long, long time. The prosecution used dubious questioning tactics of children, social workers who should have been in the local home for the bewildered--again, on and on. Then a young black athlete was convicted under equally dubious circumstances. Then others. I could get tired of putting, "on and on" here so assume it's a phrase I'd use more if I even had to.
By the way, most of those convictions had been overturned; all, so far, except Pat Dunn's, despite the lack of any evidence to convince a sane court of his guilt.
Then there's the issue(s) of the convicted criminals whom the prosecutors made deals with to convict the accused--while the prosecutors kept details of such deals out of views of the defense and the juries. (I add something the book barely mentioned: if there are obviously innocent people in prison because of prosecutors more intent on winning then on finding the truth, then there are the guilty who are still among us! That alone is a criminal offense for which the prosecutors should be prosecuted!)
Among the conclusions of the book is that such misconduct seems to be happening all over the US. Indeed, the accused are losing their right to appeal; in G.W. Bush's Texas, the state with the greatest number of executions, exculpatory evidence was not permitted after a limited time so that evidence enough to free a convicted murderer could no longer be presented as evidence. So an obviously innocent men was put to death.
There's so much in the book I'm not even sure where to go with it. The text certainly affirms my acquaintance's observation that probably 15 percent in prison haven't done anything. (That proportion is suggested by the book too to apply to the death penalty. Many on death row have been freed over the last few years due to the misconduct of the prosecutors and the courts. And that doesn't even include the many whom the state has put to death who were not guilty.)
Who is criminal given those stats?
The second of the book's appendices consists of several pages of convictions obtained through the prosecutorial misconduct that is the real subject of the book. That itself is an eye-opener. (The first appendix, incidentally, is a list of the convictions and how many are still in prison after retrials or the cases having been thrown out in Kern County itself--many after the accused have spent incredible times in prison after bogus convictions. That information alone should cause the impeachment or resignation, and conviction of those parties to the courts of that county!)
The author concludes that the system is rigged to sustain itself. Try to find courts who've overturned convictions even when the prosecutor was exposed as a fraud who should have been jailed for his/her performance in the trial. They exist but they're few and far between.
To me the point of the book is that there MUST be a price to pay for the prosecutors and even judges for the sort of misconduct the book so amply demonstrates. I mean, these people are supposed to be public servants. Instead, they're public menaces, making a sham out of anything remotely "just." (Ironically, the Kern County DA, who claims to be a Republican, is more akin to a Soviet bureaucrat than most in positions such as his!) I think, in fact, that the most severe punishments should be reserved for those who abuse their authority like those described by the book.
Read this important book and make your own decisions as to how to punish these criminals, who are more a "lead" in the book than Pat Dunn. But be prepared to have your assumptions of American criminal "justice" challenged.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Injustice in a California town
By Dennis Littrell
True crime writer Edward Humes (Mississippi Mud 1994, et al) takes apart the criminal justice system in Bakersfield, California and Kern County. The main story is about Pat Dunn, convicted in 1993 of murdering his wife for her money. The evidence was slight and relied heavily on a heroin addict's testimony, a career criminal who had gotten a deal to testify. Humes makes a good case for Dunn's innocence.
Humes also devotes some serious space to some notorious child molestation/satanic abuse cases prosecuted in Kern County during the eighties and nineties. It's the Little Rascals and McMartin all over again, except worse and prior. There's the usual brainwashing of the children by social workers to get them to tell horrific tales, and a criminal justice system out to satisfy the lust of the mob at any cost. This is very readable and Humes pulls no punches when it comes to going after the prosecutors. It's an irony of our criminal justice system that sometimes in places like this there's a public so quick to convict that they end up sending innocent people to jail, while in other places-I'm thinking of Houston, Texas and the case of Cullen Davis (see Final Justice: The True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder (1993) by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith) and of Los Angeles with you know who-we get juries that will not convict regardless of the evidence. Humes is doing the good people of Bakersfield a favor in this book, although I doubt if most of them realize it, because if the system gets too corrupt, the juries will eventually be like the jury that tried O.J.: they'll put the system on trial instead of the defendant and deliver a verdict against it.
This is top drawer true crime written by one the best in the business. In his ability to involve the reader with the story, he's on a par with Ann Rule. In his desire to expose injustice, Humes is like "Sixty Minutes" turboed.
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