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Title: Mean Justice by Edward Humes ISBN: 0-671-03427-8 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (49 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: I can only second an earlier review: "Read it and weep".
Comment: This book will disabuse anyone of the notion that our justice system dispenses justice. While on one hand the plot lines are compelling, the facts are so upsetting and shocking ,they are hard to take in large doses. I had to put it down frequently, but keep with it, it is worth it. Although not directly involved with the death penalty, the breadth and depth of the prosecutorial misconduct illustrated begs thought on the subject. The behavior of prosecutors of this ilk present a most compelling and irrefutable argument against the death penalty. Put quite simply, the decision of who should live and who should die can not be left to to the whim of one person, and especially not cheaters, liars and those with neither honor nor conscience. I challenge anyone who believes in the death penalty to hold that view after reading this book. To Mr. Hume: Well done and thank you.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Book, Nominated for an Edgar Award
Comment: 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!
Rating: 5
Summary: Power gone awry
Comment: 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.
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Title: Mississippi Mud : Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia by Edward Humes ISBN: 0671535056 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right by Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck ISBN: 0451203658 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 06 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT : A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court by Edward Humes ISBN: 0684811952 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 07 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Convicted but Innocent : Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy by C. Ronald Huff, Arye Rattner, Edward Sagarin ISBN: 0803959532 Publisher: Sage Publications Pub. Date: 23 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $43.95 |
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Title: Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice by Saundra D. Westervelt, Saundra D. Westervelt, John A. Humphrey, Michael L. Radelet ISBN: 0813529522 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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