Customer Reviews

Mean Justice

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

Among those of us who write about crime for a living, the name Edward Humes commands instant respect. Humes assiduously avoids the easy route, which is to sensationalize, embroider and embellish in an attempt to play to the cheap seats and the mass market. Whether his conclusions disturb or offend you, you will find honesty, conviction and journalistic integrity on every page, as well as skilled storytelling and graceful writing. I rate this book with MISSISSIPPI MUD, also by Humes, as two of the best examples of accurate and incisive crime journalism in recent years.

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.

Mean Justice is a brilliant investigation of one man's wrongful murder conviction and the broader subject of prosecutorial misconduct, a national disgrace. This is a big story, a national story, though it's setting is somewhat provincial, which to me makes it all the more interesting. It is also a riproaring story, which is why this book was just named a finalist for the prestigious Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Fact Crime. I have examined the prosecutorial response to this book, and it is a laughable piece of propaganda that ignores or distorts Humes' findings. Most disgraceful is the fact that this propaganda was financed by tax dollars! A national magazine recently examined the allegations in this piece of propaganda and found it so lacking in veracity that it killed the story. If you want the truth, read Mean Justice. If you want fiction, the Kern County District Attorney has plenty!

Mr. Humes has done an incalculable service in outlining the unbelievable corruption in our nation's criminal justice system - not just in the Dunn case in Bakersfield, but numerous other cases around the country. This is a true horror story - repleat with appalling facts and figures. There are truly monsters among us - disguised as police inspectors, prosecutors, and judges - and all too little is being done about it! I only hope, for the sake of raising public consciousness, there will be a movie based on this book, preferably one focusing on the child molestation/devil worship witch hunts that started in Bakersfield and so readily overran the land, ruining the lives of hundreds of innocents, children and adults.

This could have been a good book if the private investigator (Laura Lawhon?) had written it. I found it to be very repetitive. I also did not care to read about all the other cases. I wish it would have had pictures (most true crime books do)--it makes it more interesting to see who I'm reading about.

There are early parts of this book that can seem comically one-sided. By the end, the reader is persuaded by the overwhelming evidence that Dunn cannot possibly be guilty. But in the opening pages, Dunn's behavior is so bizarre, so eccentric, so plain weird, that it seems perfectly understandable that the police consider him a suspect. And when Humes tries to explain away Dunn's behavior as ordinary and natural, it diminishes his credibility throughout the rest of the book.
However, I'm a great admirer of Humes. His writing is amazing and his books are smart and readable. Like 'Mississippi Mud,' this one cries for an update. Check his Web site if you want to read more.
This is also a good jumping-off point for reading further about some of the shameful Bakersfield scandals of the '80s and '90s.

This book really hits home as I have had my share of dealings with District Attorney Ed Jagels. Although I am skeptical about the innocence of Mr. Dunn, Jagels lack of integrity and history of dishonesty makes one wonder who is running the asylum. The voluminous rebuttal that had to cost taxpayers a bundle of money shows the depths of his insecurity in the matter. The most interesting part of the book was the reference to power brokers in Bakersfield. The rumors about this have been around for years, and some of the lore has proven to be true. I'd like to see Humes check into that aspect more closely.

The author writes a compelling and convincing book and the many reviews here will attest. It is well worth reading on its own merits but I would have asked to three things if I had been able to talk to the author before it went to press. First, prosecutors come to genuinely believe that they are dragon slayers and all the shenanigans that they pull are really OK and for the greater good. In in-depth psychological profile from a clinical point of view would help give perspective and compassion for them. Second, I think the book would have been better balanced if there had been less emphasis on the Pat Dunn case and more on the child molestation cases. The coerced testimony of children by zealous hypocrites who claim that they are in fact trying to protect those children is particularly repugnant. The idea investigators would literally drive down the street and have children point at "bad" people which would then be promptly arrested is contrary to any ethical standard of enforcement. The endless years of suffering, court battles, imprisonment and mental anguish of these victims and their families is the sad result on the what happens when checks and balances fail and justice is replaced by hysteria and megalomania. These people deserve a better hearing of their grievances. Last, though the book has copious endnotes and appendices, it has no index