Book Ten

Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments
Dominick Dunne

Justice has been on my reading list for quite some time, and I finally managed to check it out from the library and make the time to read it.  Because of its heavy subject matter (basically murder and the trials and sentences that followed) and my limited reading time (read: three young children), it took me several weeks to make it through the first half of the book.  The second half went faster (Memorial Day weekend), and I'm glad I read the book.  True crime is by far my favorite genre.

Dominick Dunne has got to be one of the most interesting men who have ever lived.  Somehow he seemed to have a face or a personality or something about him that led people to trust him and share secrets with him.  He took those secrets--and honored the secret tellers when they were honest or fair--and wrote gripping fiction and compelling nonfiction.  I used to love reading what he wrote for Vanity Fair and was sad when he passed away.  Surely we had lost a great story teller who knew how to make nonfiction read like fiction and fiction carry the true weight of nonfiction.  Brilliant.

Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments is nonfiction.  In it, Dunne recounts his own daughter's murder, which drew him in to telling the stories of victims and their families while exposing the lengths that defendents and their lawyers will go to to keep guilty men (and women) out of prison.  Dunne also includes his essays on several popular trials of the '90s and early 2000s: the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and the murder of Martha Moxley and subsequent arrest--25 years later and in part because of Dunne's digging--of Michael Skakel. 

There are also chapters dedicated to other murders and trials that are less familiar, except to those who have read some of Dunne's fiction.  This was perhaps my favorite part of the book.  It was "fun" (if one can say that regarding reading about murders and justifications) to read the true story behind some of the Dunne novels I have enjoyed over the years.  He really changes remarkably little and somehow managed to avoid lawsuits even while building more than a few enemies among the rich and powerful.  I wish I could have sat in a room with him for even a short time . . . I bet the conversation would have been fascinating.

Overall, I really liked this book.  I guess it's still too soon for me to read 10 chapters about O.J. Simpson.  The trial truly was a debacle of justice, with the murders of two innocent people getting swept under the rug of pretending that a police officer's racism was a worse crime.  Those 137 pages left me disgusted and hurt and angry all over again.  It also left me grateful that he was caught in the Vegas robbery and is finally serving time.  I find it ironic that for robbery he is serving a minimum of 9 years, with a maximum of 33 years, while he served no time for murdering two people.  Yeah, it's still too soon.