Imagine a true-life, courtroom version of Heart of Darkness.
Here’s a twist: the almost unbelievable tale of a human rights attorney every bit as conscienceless as the multinational he was suing.
Filed in 1993 against Texaco, later acquired by Chevron, on behalf of the powerless Ecuadorian Indians of the Oriente, the Aguinda lawsuit sought recovery for a jungle region devastated by environmental depredations and health hazards resulting from decades of oil drilling. How Steven Donziger, barely two years out of law school, a man who had never filed even a single civil suit, became the lead attorney in a case against America’s third-largest corporation makes for an interesting story. How over 20 years he strategized, maneuvering the case through courtrooms in Ecuador and New York, how he rallied Hollywood stars, music industry celebrities, independent filmmakers and environmental activists to the cause, attracting favorable news coverage from prestigious outlets like 60 Minutes and the New York Times, how he secured a $19 billion judgment—all this makes the story even more compelling. When Chevron countersued Donziger, however, and demonstrated that the young firebrand’s victory depended on fraud, witness tampering, intimidation of judges and an orgy of spoliation, well, that story becomes irresistible. Bloomberg Businessweek assistant managing editor Barrett (Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, 2012, etc.) has been reporting this saga for years, and his familiarity with all the players, his understanding of the issues and his cool assessment of the damage inflicted by this protracted legal battle show on every page. While Donziger, his allies and methods take a beating, Barrett doesn’t let Chevron or the hardball tactics of its high-powered attorneys off the hook. Many lawyers, experts and consultants have grown rich off of Aguinda; some attorneys and their firms have been wrecked. Meanwhile, the toxic waste in the Oriente has gone untreated, the natives uncompensated. The legal fight goes on.
Imagine a true-life, courtroom version of Heart of Darkness.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7704-3634-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
PROFILES
Grippingly written, compellingly told, Mean Justice makes other tales on the miscarriage of justice look like pleasant little fairy tales. In the legal world crafted by the founders of the Constitution, a series of checks and balances exist to ensure that innocent people don’t go to jail. The crater-size cracks in the criminal justice system today, however, are disturbingly clear in this page-turner by Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Humes (No Matter How Loud I Shout, 1996; Mississippi Mud, 1994; etc.). Patrick Dunn is a retired school principal whose wife, Sandy, mysteriously disappears during one of her regular predawn walks. Although Dunn reports her missing, he becomes the prime suspect—indeed, the only suspect—based almost solely on a gut feeling by one of his closest friends, a younger woman who as an appointed official in Bakersfield, Calif., has the clout and stick-to-it-iveness to push the local police and district attorney’s office to go after Dunn. Not that they need much prodding. As Hume so carefully chronicles, this is a suburban town that already has a well-documented history of convicting innocent people and, worst of all, making these crimes stick for years. Bakersfield, after all, was one of America’s prosecutorial hot spots in seeking out supposed child molestation rings in the 1980s. Humes displays his award-winning style here as he lays out both Dunn’s sad tale—he is ultimately convicted with virtually no evidence pointing to him as the killer—and the background that so chillingly puts Dunn’s story into perspective. Especially distressing is Humes’s research indicating that cases such as Dunn’s are occurring with increasing frequency. Dunn, meanwhile, remains in jail. An eye-popping tale of justice miscarried that will shock anyone who believes our criminal justice system still works just fine.
Pub Date: Feb. 19, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-83174-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
Wecht, a forensic pathologist and lawyer (Cause of Death, 1993), provides disappointingly little insight into some sensational trials and tragedies of recent years. Wecht is often called in as an expert when local coroners have trouble establishing a cause of death or when attorneys need a fresh take on the record of an autopsy. But rather than concentrate on the interpretive abilities that have made him professionally so well known, Wecht includes a curious amount of padding here and even, in one chapter, offers transcripts of television interviews he gave on a case. Equally disappointing is his approach to some of the famous cases on which he's been consulted. Wecht provides page after page of gelatinous information about the Simpson case, including much rehashing of familiar material; along the way, he shares his personal beliefs about the Holocaust and offers an apologia for Johnny Cochran's use of bodyguards supplied by the Nation of Islam. As for forensic insight, he states two ``startling truths'': O.J. may have done it, and the police may have planted evidence. As for the deaths of David Koresh and his followers in Waco, the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton by Chicago police in 1969, the mysterious death of White House counsel Vincent Foster (it was, Wecht decides, a suicide), and the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Kentucky in 1977, in which over one hundred people died—the author's takes frequently seem terse or incomplete, rough drafts for a memoir rather than detailed records of investigations or explanations of forensic science. He concludes with a curiously indecisive take on the so-called ``alien autopsy'' film screened on television last year. A sloppy, dissatisfying work from an author who has done better. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93974-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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