'Mean Justice' Post Script: Pat Dunn Sentence Commuted

Some unexpected news this holiday weekend: California Governor Gavin Newsom has commuted the murder case against former Bakersfield high school principal Patrick Dunn.

I investigated Dunn’s conviction and the many cases of prosecutorial misconduct in Kern County for my book, Mean Justice, published in 1999. Two years ago, the governor’s office contacted me about Mean Justice and the questions it raised about Dunn’s conviction.

Late Friday I heard back that Dunn’s life-without-parole sentence has been commuted. That means he is immediately eligible for parole after more than 30 years in Corcoran State Prison and most recently, the Donovan correctional center in San Diego. He’s 87. Here’s more about Mean Justice.

The same staff attorney for the governor who reviewed Dunn’s case also was involved in commuting the murder case against JoAnn Parks, the subject of my 2019 book Burned. Parks was freed in 2021.

Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World: My ‘Total Garbage’ Newsletter

What if our worst environmental calamities, from plastic pollution to climate change, are all symptoms of just one disease, and it’s something we actually can fix?

As I write in the L.A. Times this week, in many ways the planet is fighting a single arch villain: waste. 

That’s also the subject of my new book, Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our How Waste and Heal Our World, which is out April 2 in time for Earth Day.

It’s the story of game changers and ordinary people who are tackling waste and the environmental catastrophes it drives—and more often than not, they’re saving and even making money by doing it.

Waste is so deeply embedded in our economy, products and daily lives that it’s hard to see clearly, or to see at all. But the folks who are seeing it have found that rethinking waste as our arch villain isn’t just a word game. It’s the secret sauce that turns anxiety and inertia into hope and action, because waste is the one big problem anyone can do something about.

Please join me for in-person and virtual conversations across the country this spring. Some of the extraordinary men and women featured in Total Garbage also will be joining me. When people like Seattle entrepreneur Ryan Metzger, CEO of the social-impact powerhouse Ridwell, show us how to solve a problem, it’s not about giving up stuff we love. It’s about upgrading to things we’ll love more.

• April 2: The Total Garbage book tour kicks off with a streaming conversation hosted by New York’s 92nd Street Y and former New York Times journalist Andy Revkin. 7 pm ET. Register.

• April 4: Diesel Books in Brentwood. I’ll be in conversation with Rosanna Xia, author of the award-winning California Against the Sea. 6:30 pm PT. Sign up.

• April 9: “Sustain What," a streaming show and podcast hosted by climate journalist Andy Revkin. Total Garbage game changer Sarah Nichols, architect of Maine’s “polluters pay” recycling and reuse law, also joins the discussion. 1 pm ET/10 am PT. View live or later at the Sustain What page, Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube.

• April 18: Northwest Passages Community Book Club in Spokane, Washington. I’ll be in conversation with Spokesman-Review Editor Rob Curley at Gonzaga University. 7pm PT. Get tickets. 

• April 20: Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, USC Campus. Times climate columnist Sammy Roth moderates the “Climate Change Isn’t Fiction” discussion with authors Jeff Goodell, Dan Egan, Rosanna Xia and me. The conversation is sponsored by the Getty’s PST Art: "Art & Science Collide" initiative and hosted by Getty Foundation Director Joan Weinstein. 3:30 PM PT. Get tickets.

• April 21: Peninsula Center Library, Earth Day weekend event hosted by Palos Verdes Democrats. 2:30 pm PT. Details.

• April 22: Earth Day at Elliott Bay Books, Seattle. Earth I’ll be in conversation with Ryan Metzger, CEO of Ridwell, a subscriber service that recycles and up-cycles normally unrecyclable waste. 7 PM PT.

• April 29: GoGo Refill in Portland, Maine. I’ll be joining zero-waste entrepreneur Laura Marston to sign discuss strategies for fixing our waste. 2 PM. Details will be posted soon at the GoGo Facebook page and my events page.

• April 30: Keynote Address at the Maine Resource Recovery Association in Rockport, Maine. Details.

• June 29: Chautauqua Women’s Club, Upstate New York. I’ll be talking Total Garbage to kick off the summer season at this 135-year-old center for literature, the arts, cultural enrichment, and the exchange of new ideas. Details.

These are just some of the Total Garbage events in the works. For the latest , please visit my events page.

Helpful Links

• For teachers and students check out the Total Garbage Classroom Discussion Guide.

• For book clubs, here’s the Total Garbage Readers Discussion Guide.

• For interviews and events, please contact Lillian Ball at Avery Books, a Penguin Random House imprint.

• Preorder Total Garbage from your favorite bookseller.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about the book and how you are tackling waste in your own home or community. And please join the conversation at my Garbology Facebook Page. That’s where we talk trash in a good way!

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash, was my previous investigation into what we throw away, and has been adopted as a campus and community read at universities and cities across the nation. Now Total Garbage takes the story beyond the trash can to explore waste in all its many forms — and how we fix it.

Last Word....

From  Jamiah Hargins, whose nonprofit CropSwapLA builds front yard, zero-waste urban microfarms that turn 1,000-square feet of grass into enough veggies and fruit for 25 to 40 families a week:

“Why mow your yard when you can eat your yard?”

Thanks for taking the time to read my newsletter. I look forward to seeing old and new friends this spring.

Warmest wishes,

Edward Humes

What You Can Do to Be Less Trashy: My Op-Ed in the LA Times

Our greatest opportunity for healing our economy, quality of life and the planet begins with reframing or looming environmental catastrophes, from plastic pollution to climate change, as waste.

We are the most wasteful civilization in history. Which means, while what we choose to use is important, it’s what we squander that’s killing us.

Read on….

Murder Conviction Reinstated

I’ve gotten a ton of questions about the fate of the man convicted of killing Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook, the young couple whose 1987 murder lies at the heart of The Forever Witness. As my book went to press, the conviction had been overturned and a new trial ordered for William Earl Talbott II, the first person brought to trial after being linked to a violent crime through genetic genealogy.

Recently the Washington State Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the lower appeals court had erred. Talbott’s conviction for two counts of premeditated murder has been reinstated and he remains in state prison. He was never released, and had stayed in prison during the entire appeals process.

The back and forth wrangling over this appeal had nothing to do with the revolutionary crime-fighting tool of genetic genealogy or any of the facts of the case. Rather, it focused on alleged bias by a juror. The Supreme Court slapped down this claim, pointing out that Talbott’s lawyers had chosen not to strike the juror despite having the power to do so, and had accepted the juror on the record.

You can read more about the this latest turn in the case here.

Surprising Stories Behind 'The Forever Witness'

More than 40 million of us have eagerly spit in a tube and mailed it to 23andMe, Ancestry or one of the other consumer DNA companies. Then we sit back and await a report on our origins, health risks, and a list of possible relatives from across the globe we never knew existed.

But few imagine that we also could be helping a new breed of genetic detectives uncover serial killers, rapists, and their anonymous victims. Until a detective comes knocking, and you learn you’ve got a murderer in the family.

That’s the jumping-off point for my new nonfiction book, The Forever Witness: How DNA and Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder, coming Nov. 29 from Dutton Books.

This is a story of family, loss, and a killer who thought he was beyond reach. It's also about a revolution in criminal investigation that walks the fragile line between justice and privacy—what we gain, and what we lose, with the emergence of new technology that can penetrate our most private spaces, the secrets inside our cells.

Please join me at one of my upcoming events:

Nov. 29: Virtual event hosted by the Everett Public Library and Third Place Books of Seattle. 6 pm PT. Register.

Nov 30: Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. I’ll be in conversation with bestselling author Len Mlodinow. 7 pm PT. Details.

Dec. 1: Northwest Passages Community Book Club. I’ll be in conversation with Washington Post journalist and author Eli Saslow at the Bing Crosby Theater, Spokane, WA. Hosted by the Spokesman-Review newspaper.. 7 pm PT. Details and tickets.

Dec. 3: Book Carnival in Orange, CA. 1 pm PT. Details.

Preorder The Forever Witness. For media or event requests, contact Emily Canders at Dutton Books.

It was one of the Pacific Northwest's most baffling mysteries…

Investigators tried for decades to use the FBI’s vaunted DNA Fingerprint system to solve the murders of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook, a young couple who vanished on an overnight trip to Seattle. But all this did was clear one potential suspect after another. The killer remained free.

It seemed the disappearance of Tanya and Jay on November 17, 1987—35 years ago this week—would remain a mystery forever.

Then an unlikely partnership developed between a cold case detective and a former actress with a unique ability to uncover buried secrets with a DNA technology very different from the FBI and police crime labs. She uses inexpensive home ancestry tests sold online—mail-order kits that forensic experts disdain as toys next to their expensive technologies and techniques.

But they were wrong. And crime-fighting would never be the same.

The Forever Witness is available as a hardcover, ebook or audiobook, which I narrated.

I’m excited about the publication of The Forever Witness in just 10 days. I look forward to hearing what you think, and would love to connect through Twitter (for now at least), Facebook, Instagram or Goodreads, or via my website.

Hanging with my greyhounds, Valiant and Dottie. Photo by Michael Goulding.

West Coast Climate Crisis Symposium

How do we tell the climate story in ways the fire people up rather than leaving them in despair? That’s the challenge I’ll be discussing at the West Coast Climate Crisis Symposium at UCLA Saturday, June 4, 2022, 2 p.m. Join us online or at the campus.