by Edward Humes
In a passage that is still widely quoted in court opinions sixty years later (including in the California case law cited in the discussion of Jagels’ misconduct in the Perez case), the court explained why the conduct of prosecutors is so crucial to justice:
The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
17. “Jagels’ attacks draw criticism,” Bakersfield Californian, May 27, 1982. Jagels was quoted by the Californian as saying he did not regret his behavior in the Perez trial, and that Perez might have been acquitted had he not acted accordingly. Jagels pinned the blame for problems in the case on opposing counsel’s misbehavior and the trial judge’s passivity. “It became obvious after a very short time that the judge was not going to control the defense attorney,” Jagels said. “If I had not done something to control defense counsel myself, there is no telling what would have happened in that case.” The appeals court opinion in the case refutes Jagels on these points, painting the prosecutor as the primary malefactor and stating that nothing the defense attorney did warranted Jagels’ misbehavior or could have led to an acquittal in the case. Jagels, however, remained adamant, and was quoted in the Californian as saying such advocacy as he displayed in the Perez case is required of a dedicated prosecutor. The appeals judges, on the other hand, were “the most extreme pro-criminal judiciary in the country,” he complained. Ironically, the defense attorney in the Perez case with whom Jagels found so much fault would go on to become a judge of the Kern County Municipal Court, where he regularly hears criminal cases brought by Jagels’ office.
18. From the author’s interviews with Bakersfield Californian photographer John Harte, and confirmed by other Kern County journalists. District Attorney Ed Jagels declined the author’s requests for an interview.
19. William Vogeler, “Kern County Prosecutor Attacked as Overzealous,” Daily Journal (San Francisco), July 6, 1989. According to this legal newspaper’s research, nineteen cases alleging prosecutorial misconduct against the Kern County District Attorney had reached the appellate level in the first six years of Jagels’ term in office—triple the number in the preceding twelve years. (Further research by the author indicates that number was actually twenty-three cases. At least eight of these cases involving twenty-one defendants eventually were reversed, though misconduct provided the decisive grounds for reversal in only three of them, affecting a total of nine defendants.)
20. Ibid. Justice George A. Brown of the Fifth District panel of the California Court of Appeal, now retired, made these comments in open court during oral arguments in the appeal of the 1986 first-degree murder conviction and life sentence of Jerry William Blackman of Bakersfield. Blackman’s attorney, Mark Christiansen, complained that Kern County prosecutors had failed to reveal the existence of a jailhouse informant in the case until trial, a form of misconduct. Christiansen asserted that the case fit into a “pattern of misconduct” among Kern County prosecutors, and that judges in Kern County had grown concerned. Another justice, James Ardaiz, followed up Brown’s comments by saying, “Trying every case to the edge and expecting the appellate court to keep you from falling over the edge is inappropriate.” Brown then suggested the state attorney general should look into the matter and “do something about it.” A representative of the attorney general subsequently telephoned Jagels’ office in response to Brown’s suggestion, but no formal action or inquiry was made. Notwithstanding the extraordinary public criticism—rarely made in the staid atmosphere of appellate oral arguments—the Blackman conviction was unanimously upheld, and the court’s opinion made no comment on the misconduct allegations. (The reason for Justice Brown’s apparent ire at Jagels and his office became clear a few months later, when the same appeals court overturned a massive criminal case involving seven defendants sentenced to thousands of years in prison. The seven men and women convicted in an enormous molestation-ring case had to be set free because of massive prosecutorial misconduct, the appeals court found. The opinion in the case was being written at the time of the Blackman hearing.)
21. Pat’s recollections about Sandy’s odd behavior are not considered credible by Kern County authorities. They say that because Pat did not describe this driving incident in initial interviews with detectives, it probably did not happen, and Pat most likely manufactured the tale to bolster his story about Sandy developing Alzheimer’s disease and wandering off. Pat counters by saying he was distraught and simply forgot to mention the incident in initial interviews with detectives, though he did describe other occasions on which Sandy seemed overly forgetful. It should be noted that Pat failed to mention several instances of Sandy’s forgetfulness that were witnessed by others, including James Marino.
22. Pat Dunn and Jim Weins, interviews with the author.
23. The account of Kate Rosenlieb’s discussions and meetings with Pat Dunn and Detective Kline, and her reasoning for suspecting Pat of killing Sandy, is based primarily on Rosenlieb’s recollections, as related in Kline’s July 5, 1992, report on his initial interview with Rosenlieb, filed in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC92-14851; Rosenlieb’s personal journal, portions of which were contained in the legal discovery file in People vs. Pat Dunn and portions of which were never disclosed until Rosenlieb provided copies to the author; and the author’s interviews with Rosenlieb. Kline, in an interview with the author, provided some additional details.
24. The account of Detective Kline’s meeting with Pat Dunn is based on Kline’s July 5, 1992, report in Kern County Sheriff’s Case KC92-14851; and the author’s interviews with Kline and Dunn.
25. The account of Jerry Coble’s interrogation by Detective Banducci is based upon Banducci’s report, in Kern County Sheriff’s Department Case KC91-06787, and the author’s interview with Banducci and his partner, Sheriff’s Detective Jeff Niccoli, who was witness to Coble’s arrest and interrogation. Coble, in an interview with the author, called Banducci a liar, and denied any connection between his desire to strike a deal after his arrest in the theft case and his eventual plea bargain and agreement to testify against Pat Dunn.
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 San
dy 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 Kid
der 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.