Mean Justice: A Town's Terror, a Prosecutor's Power, a Betrayal of Innocence [Hardcover]

Edward Humes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 19, 1999

The incredible true story of a California town where the innocent are presumed guilty and dozens of ordinary citizens have been convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; X edition (February 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684831740
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831749
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #447,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

QUICK STORY: A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, Edward Humes' latest book is FORCE OF NATURE: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart's Green Revolution (Harper Collins, May 2011). His other books include the PEN Award-winning NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT: A Year In the Life of Juvenile Court, the bestseller MISSISSIPPI MUD, and MONKEY GIRL: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul, now under development at HBO.

BACK STORY: When I was six I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I've been at it ever since. I started my writing career in newspapers, and I think I probably would have paid them, instead of the other way around, for the thrill of seeing my first byline in print. As a newspaper reporter, I gravitated toward stories that allowed me to dig behind the scenes and beneath the surface, looking for questions others hadn't asked or imagined. For me, the job amounted to this: license to find out the things I had always wanted to know, about anything and everything that interested, touched or outraged me. Then, within the space and time limitations of a daily newspaper, I had the chance to mold it all into a story to pass onto others. I loved that work.

When I left newspapers to write nonfiction books, I suddenly had weeks or months, rather than hours or days, to immerse myself in the inner workings of the places, characters and events I seek to understand and write about. I had found the greatest job I can imagine.

In my books, I try to take readers inside worlds most don't get to visit or see close up on their own. My first stories were about crime -- real-life murder mysteries-- and I still enjoy reading and writing true crime. But I've pursued broader and more varied narratives in my more recent books. I've written about the nation's crumbling juvenile justice system, the California high school that went from worst to best in the state, the harrowing but surprisingly humane world of a neonatal intensive care unit, the front lines of a modern-day Scopes Monkey Trial, a Gulf Coast murder mystery solved by the victims' own daughter.

Lately - in ECO BARONS and my next book, FORCE OF NATURE (due out in spring 2011) - I've focused on narratives about the environment and sustainability. I believe this to be the most important story of our age - for ourselves, and for our children.

OTHER WRITING: I've written for numerous publications, including Los Angeles Magazine, Sierra Magazine, Readers Digest, California Lawyer, the Oxford American, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. I have taught writing and journalism at the University of California, Irvine, Chapman University, and the University of Oregon.

SPEAKING: I enjoy speaking about my work, and have been invited to address a wide range of groups and organizations:the National Education Summit, the National Steinbeck Center, the ALOUD series, the National Association of District Attorneys, the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, the National Association of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Dole Center for Politics, the National High School Journalism Conference, the National College Newspaper Convention, the National Association of Teachers of English, the California Department of Corrections, the California Appellate Project, the American Psychology and Law Society, the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Poynter Institute, the Crichton Club and numerous universities and other schools. I was called to testify about my reporting on juvenile court before the U.S. Senate and a joint session of the California Senate and Assembly. I've had the pleasure of delivering a commencement address at Hampshire College in Amherst, my alma mater, and have enjoyed speaking at venues throughout California as a contributing writer to MY CALIFORNIA, an anthology from which all proceeds were donated to the California Arts Council to support arts and writing programs for the state's school children. I served as a Regents Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, and taught writing workshops at the University of Oregon graduate program in literary nonfiction.

HONORS: I received a Pulitzer Prize for my newspaper coverage of the military, a PEN Center USA award for NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT, a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for "The Forgotten," my LA Magazine account of life inside Los Angeles's nightmarish home for neglected children, and a Silver Gavel honor for MONKEY GIRL. The Washington Post named SCHOOL OF DREAMS a best book of 2003; the Los Angeles Times named MEAN JUSTICE a best book of 1999.

BORN: Philadelphia.

EDUCATION: Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass.

CURRENT WHEREABOUTS: Southern California

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, scary if true, November 21, 1999

By 

"wizard72" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mean Justice (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Power gone awry, April 24, 2004

By 

Timothy P. Scanlon (Hyattsville, MDUSA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mean Justice (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great Job by Humes, December 26, 1999

By 

jack olsen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mean Justice: A Town's Terror, a Prosecutor's Power, a Betrayal of Innocence (Hardcover)

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.