Mean Justice (43 page)

Even Coble’s claims about seeing the body wrapped in a blue blanket were subject to attack, thanks to the work of the prosecution’s own criminalist, who analyzed the handful of fibers found clinging to Sandy’s body. First, none of them could have come from a white bedsheet. And, second, although there were some dark blue fibers collected, these were from a synthetic fabric with the trade name Olefin—which is used primarily for carpeting, and never in the sort of bedroom blanket Coble described, because of its flammability. Neither Pat’s house nor his cars had Olefin carpeting in them.

Finally, the defense lawyer forced Coble to reveal his recidivist tendencies by making him admit that he had continued buying and using heroin for at least four months
after
cutting his deal to testify in the Dunn case, even though he had promised to stop using and knew that getting caught could have canceled his plea bargain and put him back in prison. Coble tried to minimize the sting of this, by saying that he used only five or six times a month, not much at all—his habit being limited by his lack of income at the time.

“I wasn’t working,” he explained. “I didn’t have any money and I wasn’t doing any crime.”

And so the star witness left the stand a short time later, his credibility severely eroded. Pohlson felt he had just about won the case then and there, and Laura started feeling things might come out all right, after all. But she looked over at John Somers, too. He didn’t look happy, but neither did he look devastated, and that worried her anew.

She did not know—as no one on the defense team
could
know—that Jerry Lee Coble had actually gotten off easy. He was damaged, certainly, but not destroyed, though he could have been. For there was a great deal of additional information available on his crimes and his lack of credibility, much of it known to the district attorney’s office. Had it been presented to the jury, it could have severely eroded whatever remained of Coble’s viability as a witness, and it could have dealt a serious blow to the credibility of the sheriff and district attorney as well. But that information was not used in the trial, and for one reason: The defense never saw it.

As in so many other cases in Kern County, and despite laws requiring full disclosure, key information about Coble was never given to Pat Dunn’s lawyers. And, as a result, Gary Pohlson’s victory over Jerry Coble remained a hollow one—for it would not last.

•   •   •

Whatever success Pat Dunn’s defense team enjoyed with Jerry Coble, was soon upstaged by the painful appearance on the witness stand of someone close to Pat. The real estate attorney Teri Bjorn would be the prosecution’s last witness, and its most devastating.

A month before trial, Kate Rosenlieb had told Somers about a supposed conversation between Bjorn and Pat within hours of Sandy’s disappearance, and the prosecutor was anxious for the jury to hear about it—just as the defense badly wanted it kept out of court. Teri Bjorn certainly did not want to testify, and both she and Pat asserted that their conversation was protected by the rigid rules of attorney-client privilege, rendering it confidential and out of bounds to the prosecution. Somers, however, argued there was no right of confidentiality. Basing his
argument on Kate Rosenlieb’s secondhand recollections, he asserted Pat had sought Bjorn’s help in gaining an illegal power of attorney over Sandy’s money, a criminal act that would not be protected by the privilege.

With the two sides unable to agree on this crucial issue, the judge presiding over the case, Robert Baca, had reserved judgment on what role, if any, Bjorn would play in the trial until he had heard the rest of the prosecution’s case. Pat’s defense team had been pleased. They had wanted Baca on the case from the outset, for he was known to be prickly and independent, with a history of taking on the district attorney’s office. Because Baca had been a public defender early in his career, Pohlson figured he would be particularly protective of attorney-client communications. Pohlson’s enthusiasm for the judge faded quickly—the out-of-town lawyers simply did not get along with Baca—but even so, when the judge accepted Somers’ suggestion that the court hold an
in camera
session on the Bjorn matter, the defense team was aghast. They had expected to prevail on argument alone.

Instead, Baca decided he should meet in chambers alone with Bjorn and a court reporter to determine if Somers was right. If there was at least some evidence that Pat had sought Bjorn’s help in committing a crime, Baca said, the privilege would evaporate and conversation would be admitted as evidence in the trial.

In chambers, Teri Bjorn explained to the judge that she was not just a lawyer to the Dunns, but their friend as well. She said Pat had called her one morning to say Sandy was missing, describing to her how he had awakened to find his wife gone and how he had searched for her through the night. Bjorn couldn’t remember all the details of this long-ago conversation or the exact words
used, but what she did recall jibed with what Pat had said on other occasions to other people.

From Sandy’s disappearance, the conversation next turned to the Morning Star housing project. Bjorn could not remember if she had brought the subject up, or if Pat had; she did recall she had been trying to reach the Dunns for about a week in order to talk to them about the project, so she may well have instigated the discussion. Both she and Pat were concerned that bills were coming due on Morning Star, and that the money Sandy had lined up for that purpose through sales of some municipal bonds had not been released yet. Pat, according to Bjorn, then said if Sandy came back and found the project shut down because the bills had not been paid, she would be very concerned. It was at this point that Pat asked whether some mechanism might be put into place to get the bills paid. “Could I use a power of attorney?” Bjorn recounted him asking.

As she explained to Judge Baca, she then responded no, because Sandy would have to sign such an authorization in advance, and as far as Bjorn knew, Sandy had not done so. It seemed clear to Bjorn that Pat did not know what a power of attorney was, she told Baca. Bjorn then recalled suggesting to Pat that she would talk to another lawyer in her firm about what else might be done to pay the bills until Sandy came home. And that was the end of any discussion about money or power of attorney, Bjorn said.

She added one more detail: “I believe he told me he had either filed or was going to file a missing-persons report.”

This ambiguous point would be pivotal, because it could help determine an important point: when this call
took place. If Pat had already filed the report, the conversation with Bjorn must have occurred on July 2, the morning after Sandy was reported missing. If so, there was nothing really strange going on. But if he hadn’t yet reported Sandy missing, the conversation must have occurred on July 1, well before the missing-persons call. That would make Pat look very, very bad. He would have put Sandy’s money before Sandy herself.

From his
in camera
session, Judge Baca ruled there was sufficient evidence to believe that Pat had sought Bjorn’s services to commit a crime or fraud, which meant the attorney-client privilege didn’t apply, and Bjorn would have to testify before the jury. The judge decided that Pat had been trying to gain control of
all
of Sandy’s assets, even though Bjorn had testified that Pat’s inquiry was strictly limited to paying bills that Sandy had previously expressed her intention to pay. In coming to this conclusion, it seemed the judge had listened less to Bjorn’s actual testimony than to Somers’ argument, which was based on Kate Rosenlieb’s version of what Teri Bjorn had said (Somers had handed Baca a copy of Rosenlieb’s notes to use as a guide). Indeed, Bjorn told Baca that Pat had only asked if a power of attorney were possible; he hadn’t told Bjorn he wanted one put in place, as Somers and Rosenlieb had stated. The difference here is small but crucial: The former could be likened to asking an accountant if a certain tax deduction is legal; the latter would be akin to ordering the accountant to take the deduction whether it’s legal or not. The defense might have objected to this leap in logic by the judge, but they were not allowed to be present for the
in camera
hearing and no transcript of the secret proceeding was made available until later.

So Teri Bjorn returned to the courtroom, where she was ordered to repeat her story. Her testimony before the jury mirrored what she had told Baca in chambers in most respects. Despite Somers’ best efforts, she never actually testified that Pat had asked her for power of attorney over Sandy’s funds. The DA twice asked if Pat requested a power of attorney, but Bjorn never gave him a yes or no answer. All she would say was what she had told the judge: that Pat was searching for a mechanism to pay the Morning Star bills, and that he didn’t actually know what a power of attorney was—hardly the evidence Somers was looking for. Yet, from that, the prosecutor would later argue that Pat Dunn
asked for
power of attorney, and Judge Baca never corrected him. Neither did the defense: It seems everyone else in the courtroom remembered Teri Bjorn saying something she never actually said on the witness stand.

There was one crucial point on which Bjorn’s courtroom testimony differed from her
in camera
version. The second time around, in front of the lawyers and jurors, Bjorn did not mention being unsure about whether she had spoken to Pat before or after he reported Sandy missing. Instead, she simply said,
to the best of her recollection,
the conversation occurred during the morning of July 1—which everyone in the courtroom knew would have been
before
Pat reported Sandy missing. Baca did not say anything about this discrepancy, and neither did Bjorn, so the defense remained in the dark. John Somers had hit the jackpot. In the end, the most devastating part of Teri Bjorn’s testimony was not that Pat had sought her advice, but
when
he sought it.

The defense had witnesses and evidence available to suggest that the call described by Bjorn had been made
later in the week than she recalled,
⁷
but their proof would have been complicated and hard for the jury to follow. Gary Pohlson decided not to make an issue out of it, instead arguing that it didn’t matter what day the call was made because Pat’s question to Bjorn was an innocent one. Pat had called to tell a friend about his missing wife, and that friend—who happened also to be a real estate attorney—brought up the subject of the Morning Star project and the outstanding bills. And in response, Pohlson said, Pat had simply expressed a desire to carry out Sandy’s wishes in her absence, the actions of a man just trying to go on with life. If Pat’s friends were unanimous about anything, it was that he was the type of person who would try to go on with his normal routines, no matter what—and that Sandy would have wanted it that way.

Pohlson’s argument sounded reasonable as he delivered it, but it gave Somers an opening as well. With the July 1 date unchallenged and Bjorn’s uncertainty in chambers never passed on to the jury, the prosecutor countered with a powerful and damning argument: The only person Pat Dunn called that morning, the prosecutor said, was his lawyer. He wanted to get hold of Sandy’s money, he wanted to get power of attorney, he wanted to probate his wife’s will right away. “I’m sorry, but that is not the first thing on your mind when your wife has disappeared. . . . But if you know that your wife is dead, ladies and gentlemen, then it’s very important.”

With that, Somers’ portrait of Pat Dunn as coldblooded killer was complete. He had already played that awful tape recording of Pat reporting Sandy missing, the jokes and laughter sounding loud and tinny in the hushed courtroom. The jury had already heard Kate Rosenlieb tell of how Pat had showed no emotion over
his wife’s disappearance—other than seeming happy at times. First his own words were used against him, then his best friend’s and now his own lawyer’s. As hard proof, Bjorn’s testimony had little weight. But its emotional impact on the case seemed incalculable: It just didn’t sound right. The mere fact that Pat’s own lawyer was testifying against him was devastating. If the jury had known their conversation might have taken place a day after Pat reported Sandy missing, Bjorn’s testimony might have had little force. As it was, when Teri Bjorn left the courtroom, the prosecutor rested his case, certain he had convinced the jury that Pat Dunn was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

5

B
Y THE TIME THE TRIAL REACHED THIS POINT,
P
AT
Dunn sat numb and barely able to follow the proceedings. He had been active and participating fully at the start, writing notes, whispering to his lawyers, savoring early victories and any look of chagrin on the prosecutor’s face. But his enthusiasm had faded with time and, even now, with his moment finally arrived—the start of the defense case—he had become so intimidated and fearful of being on trial for his life that he found it hard to concentrate. He would later say he could remember little of what was said or done. He stopped expressing a desire to take the witness stand and instead kept saying to Laura, “I just wish it was over.” She bit her lip and stopped herself from replying, “Be careful what you wish for.” Because if it ended then and there, she feared, he’d lose.