Mean Justice (64 page)

26
. The request was an unusual one, under the circumstances: Most polygraph experts believe that creating surprising or tense circumstances for a lie-detector test can blur or invalidate the results—the test, had Pat taken it, would in all likelihood have been worthless. Still, the net effect was that relations between Pat and the department sank rapidly downhill from there. The detectives accused Pat of failing to cooperate in their investigation. Pat, in turn, accused the detectives of being more interested in questioning people about him than in searching for his missing wife.

27
. The warrant authorizing a search of the Dunn home at 1700 Crestmont Drive was signed by Bakersfield Municipal Court
Judge John Fielder on July 23, 1992, at 8:57
P.M
., and served on Pat Dunn fifty-seven minutes later. It was filed in the municipal court under Case KC92-14851. The sworn affidavit filed by Detective John Soliz in order to obtain the search warrant is supposed to show probable cause that Pat Dunn committed murder. Instead, it contains information from Kate Rosenlieb describing the Dunns’ alleged drinking and fighting, as well as Rosenlieb’s various misstatements concerning Sandy’s walking habits and jewelry; it describes Pat’s 1989 arrest for spousal abuse (but does not mention that the case was dismissed and never proved); it quotes several individuals who claimed Sandy had no memory problems while failing to mention individuals who did detect such problems; it mentions the fact that Pat canceled a housecleaning appointment, supposedly on the day Sandy disappeared, and that he was out of breath with water running in the background when he and the housecleaner spoke on the phone; it asserts a previous voluntary search by detectives at the Dunn home was performed in “a hostile environment” and “done under pressure from Pat Dunn”; it says Pat’s foreclosure business was losing money and in turmoil before he shut it down (without mentioning the fact that this was due to his surgery and convalescence); it describes how Pat failed to tell some people that his wife was missing; and, finally, it explains how a body found in the desert was eventually identified as Sandy’s. No witnesses, no physical evidence and no circumstantial evidence were provided in the search warrant request to link Pat to the place where the body was found, to any sort of murder weapon, or to any sort of recent threat against Sandy. Indeed, there is nothing cited in the warrant application that can be described as evidence of criminal activity of any kind by Pat Dunn. Nevertheless, Bakersfield Municipal Court Judge John Fielder, based upon Soliz’s affidavit, found probable cause that a crime had been committed and authorized the search. Dunn’s attorney, Gary Pohlson, later said that had the search turned up anything incriminating, it might well have been tossed out of court because of the lack of probable cause in the affidavit. However, because nothing at all was found—suggesting Pat’s innocence—the defense never challenged the search warrant’s validity.

28
. There are no dear-cut rules on when to take notes or to record statements during a police investigation; practices vary
from detective to detective, agency to agency. Many investigators jot notes contemporaneously, but others, like Soliz, prefer to write up notes after an interview, to avoid distracting themselves or their suspects. Many police agencies decline to tape-record interviews as well, though this practice varies greatly, even within Kern County, where certain types of interviews—particularly those involving child victims of sexual abuse—are now routinely taped because of past controversies. The stated reason for not tape-recording is the belief that a suspect or witness is less likely to relax and open up during an interview if he or she is aware of being taped. Another reason put forth by defense attorneys is that the actual dialogue of tape-recorded statements is often more ambiguous than it appears to be in a summary written up in police reports, and therefore less favorable to the prosecution. Furthermore, the reluctance to tape-record initial interviews of suspects may arise from official concerns that hardball interrogation tactics (which legally can include using lies to trick a suspect into confessing) would be captured on tape as well, and could become an issue once the case is before a jury. Recent concerns about false and coerced confessions have led many police agencies to rethink their posture on taping, with over 2,400 of them adopting a policy of recording all interrogations and some witness interviews, according to a U.S. Department of Justice Study described in “Police Refine Methods So Potent, Even the Innocent Have Confessed,” Jan Hoffman
(The New York Times
, March 30, 1998).

29
. The account of Rex Martin’s relationship with Pat Dunn and their trip to Paris-Lorraine is based upon Martin’s statements to detectives on July 21, 1992, contained in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC92-14851, and on July 27, 1992, in Case MO92-00633; his statements to private investigator Laura Lawhon on February 24, 1993, contained in an undated report by Lawhon to attorney Gary Pohlson; Martin’s testimony in
People vs. Patrick Dunn;
and the author’s interviews with Martin and Dunn.

30
. Kate Rosenlieb’s pivotal role in the identification of Sandy’s body, and her communications with Detective Kline on the subject, were related to the author during his interviews with Rosenlieb and Kline.

31
. Detective Vernon “Dusty” Kline, interview with the author. As is typical (and lawful) in criminal investigations, these
hardball interrogation tactics were not documented in official crime reports in the case, and thus were never put before any judge or jury as the case was litigated and decided. However, in an interview with the author, Kline readily and even proudly described his method of interrogating Pat Dunn as a deliberate attempt to “get under his skin” in order to provoke an incriminating statement or outright confession. It should be noted that the courts have long approved such tactics—and other, more powerful psychological warfare tactics—as acceptable law-enforcement tools.

32
. In “The Social Psychology of Police Interrogations: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions”
(Studies in Law, Politics and Society
16 [1997]) and “The Consequences of False Confessions: Deprivations of Liberty and Miscarriages of Justice in the Age of Psychological Interrogation”
(Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology,
1998), Professors Richard A. Leo and Richard J. Of she detail at least sixty proven cases of false confessions occurring since the 1966
Miranda
decision, finding that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence, false confessions still lead to convictions. The authors opine that, despite an end to overt physical brutality against suspects in order to “wring confessions” from them—a practice now believed to have generated many false confessions during the first half of this century—“contemporary American psychological interrogation practices continue to induce false confessions, as did earlier Third Degree methods.”

Meanwhile, Jan Hoffman, in “Police Refine Methods So Potent, Even the Innocent Have Confessed”
(The New York Times,
March 30, 1998) points out, “Although the number of false confessions is in dispute, their prevalence is shaking the confidence of both prosecutors and juries in the reliability of confessions. . . . [such that] at least 2,400 sheriff’s and police departments around the country are audiotaping and even videotaping not just confessions, but often interrogations as well.” Kern County has not joined this trend, and at least two murder cases and numerous other felonies there have been dismissed or overturned after questions were raised about the coercive manner in which the sheriff’s department extracted confessions and witness statements.

According to “The Psychology of Confession Evidence”
American Psychologist
52, no. 3 (1997), a study by psychologist Saul
Kassin of Williams College showed the remarkable ease with which false confessions can be extracted by authority figures. A majority of university students in Kassin’s experiment were persuaded to confess to pushing a forbidden button and thereby causing a computer to crash, when in fact they had not done so, and the consequence of confessing was receiving an angry phone call from their professor. The reactions of different groups were gauged; some subjects were merely accused, others were told that there had been eyewitnesses. When it was claimed that a witness had seen the subject push the forbidden button—much as police interrogators sometimes fabricate eyewitnesses—nine out of ten students in the study signed a false confession, and 65 percent actually came to believe their own false confession to be true.

33
. It is true that many guilty suspects keep talking well past the point where silence would be in their self-interest, a tendency that helps police and prosecutors secure criminal convictions on a daily basis. But research by social scientists and psychologists suggests that this tendency is by no means an absolute sign of guilt: Innocents under suspicion seldom clam up, either, because they essentially trust the police and feel that cooperating by answering all questions will help set things straight.

34
. The account of the interrogation of Pat Dunn is based upon Detective Soliz’s written report on the July 23, 1992, search and interview at the Dunns’ home; on Soliz’s testimony in
People vs. Dunn;
and on the author’s interviews with Detective Kline and Pat Dunn.

35
. The account of Soliz’s initial theories about Sandy’s call to Ann Kidder and Kidder’s value as a witness are drawn from a report by Soliz dated July 27, 1992, filed in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC92-14851 (the report discusses statements by Kidder and her employer, accountant Rick Williams); from the author’s interviews with Detectives Soliz and Kline; from statements by Ann Kidder on February 23, 1993, as contained in an undated memorandum by private investigator David Sandberg to attorney Gary Pohlson, and from the testimony of Ann Kidder in
People vs. Patrick Dunn.

36
. The description of Detective Soliz’s first encounter with Jerry Lee Coble is drawn from Soliz’s September 21, 1992, report on his interview of Coble filed in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC92-14851; Soliz’s testimony in
People vs.
Patrick Dunn;
Coble’s testimony in
People vs. Dunn;
and the author’s interviews with Soliz, Coble, Detective Eric Banducci and Kern County Deputy District Attorney John Somers.

PART II: LAURA

1
. Jerry Lee Coble’s complete criminal record at the time of Pat Dunn’s arrest shows a remarkable talent for eluding punishment, even in notoriously tough-on-crime Kern County. His crimes include the following:

• November 3, 1992: Coble received probation for grand theft in Kern County Superior Court Case 47620, reduced from multiple counts of grand theft and conspiracy after Coble agreed to testify against Pat Dunn. He had been on parole for prior offenses at the time of his arrest on April 4, 1991, yet was not required to serve out the prior prison term.

• December 12, 1989: Coble received two years in prison after his arrest for burglary, receiving stolen property and other felonies is reduced to a single count of receiving stolen property through a plea bargain in Kern County Superior Court Case 39768. Coble was paroled September 27, 1990, and was still on parole for this offense at the time of his next arrest.

• March 18, 1987: Sentenced to three years in prison for burglary after six counts are reduced to one through a plea bargain in Kern County Superior Court Case 32800. He was paroled June 20, 1988.

• August 26, 1982: Sentenced to three years for grand theft after nine counts are reduced to one through a plea bargain in Kern County Superior Court Case 24075.

• February 5, 1981: Sentenced to time served for aggravated assault in Marietta, Georgia, where he previously lived.

Additional arrests—in which cases were handled as misdemeanors, citations or were dismissed outright—include multiple
drug possession charges, assault, battery, obstructing police, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, armed robbery, check fraud, theft and petty theft.

Source: Kern County Superior Court records; Kern County Municipal Court records; Kern County Sheriff’s Department reports; testimony of Jerry Coble in
People vs. Dunn.

2
. Though Kern County has a population one sixth the size of the City of Los Angeles, its sheriff and police departments have in some years been responsible for as many shootings as their counterparts to the south. During one eight-month stretch in 1995, the problem became especially pronounced: There were seventeen shootings by law-enforcement officers in Kern County, a majority of them by the sheriff’s department. Five were fatal and several involved unarmed suspects attempting to flee. The most notorious involved a Los Angeles woman named Suzannah Cody, the distraught twenty-six-year-old wife of a Los Angeles cop, who led police—and a live television audience—on a freeway chase and hour-long standoff on a lonely Kern County road. Surrounded by police but still armed, Cody was killed by a sheriff’s sharpshooter after she made what officials later described as an “ambiguous” move with her pistol. (Video of the incident suggests she may have been scratching her back at the time the fatal shot was fired.) All seventeen of the shootings were eventually deemed justified by Kern County authorities. See “Trigger Happy in Kern County,”
California Lawyer,
October 1995; Lucille Renwick, “Woman Killed After Chase Is Identified,”
Los Angeles Times,
July 7, 1995; “Slayings by Kern Deputies Prompt Internal Review,” Associated Press, July 7, 1995.

3
. Judge Milton Elconin, presiding judge of the West Kern Municipal Court, based in Bakersfield, was also known for feuding with some of his fellow judges, for treating female attorneys in a fashion designed to make them cry, and for his courtroom attacks on the former police chief of the small Kern County town of Shafter, Gene Kaplan. Kaplan, himself a controversial figure, sued the judge for libel (and later settled for one third of the judge’s estate, about $7,500) after Elconin publicly branded him “a painful abscess in the side of law enforcement throughout the county” and a “posturing, paranoid, pusillanimous pissant” who had earned the “disrespect of all legitimate law enforcement leaders
in this county.” Elconin had never met or spoken to Kaplan prior to issuing this denunciation, though he was close to several of Kaplan’s detractors and political opponents. Many who had appeared in Elconin’s courtroom—defendants and lawyers both—felt his diatribe more aptly described Elconin himself than anyone else, though he was recalled in his May 14, 1981,
Bakersfield Californian
obituary in glowing terms as “one of the last remnants of frontier justice . . . (who) believed people had not only the right to be stupid but also to say what they believed.” It was in retaliation against Kaplan’s allegedly brutal treatment of offenders—allegations never proved—that Elconin dismissed charges against a courtroom filled with fifteen criminal defendants. Prosecutors in Kern County subsequently branded this action illegal. Sources: W. J. McCance, “His comments livened courtroom,”
Bakersfield Californian,
May 14, 1981; Steve E. Swenson, “Charges further split feuding judges,”
Bakersfield Californian,
December 18, 1979; Steve E. Swenson, “Late judge’s estate settles libel case,”
Bakersfield Californian,
February 12, 1982; letter dated March 12, 1980, from Shafter Police Chief Gene Kaplan to West Kern Municipal Court Presiding Judge James G. Bowles; letter dated March 17, 1980, from Judge Milton Elconin to Kaplan; Michael Trihey, “Judge threatens FBI probe,”
Bakersfield Californian,
March 20, 1980; complaint letter dated April 1, 1980, from the City of Shafter to the California Commission on Judicial Performance; Michael Trihey, “Gripe Against Kaplan Rings False,”
Bakersfield Californian,
April 24, 1980; and the author’s interviews with attorneys in practice in Kern County during Elconin’s tenure.