Edward Thomas Dunn Jr

E. Thomas Dunn, Jr. is an appellate practitioner based in Tustin, California, handling both state and federal appeals, writs, and law and motion matters throughout Southern California.  Mr. Dunn has a quarter century of experience handling trial and appellate work.  Since January 1995, Mr. Dunn has been certified as a specialist in Criminal Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization, and he has been certified a specialist in Appellate Law since December 2003.  In addition to his own practice, he has served in an Of Counsel capacity to a number of local law firms, including McMillion and Hirtensteiner LLP and the LibertyBell Law Group in Burbank, California.  He has also given his time to act as an Appointed Settlement Officer for the California Court of Appeal, Second District, in Los Angeles.

In June 2001, after nearly two decades of public service, Mr. Dunn joined the firm of Manning & Marder, Kass, Ellrod, Ramirez LLP in Los Angeles, where he successfully handled complex civil rights cases in state and federal trial and appellate courts for two years, appearing opposite attorneys Steven Yagman and Johnny Cochran on a regular basis.  Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Dunn was a Senior Judicial Attorney for the California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division Three, in Santa Ana, where he served as Lead Appellate Counsel in the Chambers of Justice William W. Bedsworth for almost four years.  Prior to joining Justice Bedsworth’s staff, Mr. Dunn was a Senior Deputy District Attorney for the County of Orange, where he prosecuted criminal cases for more than 12 years, and also served for two years as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, representing the district attorneys of all 58 California counties in the federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, handling complex civil and constitutional litigation.

During his years as a state and county prosecutor, Mr. Dunn accumulated an exemplary trial record, achieving a 100% conviction rate in all his felony trials.  Mr. Dunn was also recognized for his special skills as an appellate lawyer, having begun his legal career by winning his first case—Hicks v. Feiock (1988) 485 U.S. 624—in the United States Supreme Court.   Mr. Dunn has numerous published opinions to his credit, including In re Feiock (1989) 214 141, which changed the law in California to make it easier for single parents to collect child support, and the landmark decision of the California Supreme Court in Tobe v. City of Santa Ana (1995) 9 1069, where the Court upheld the city’s anti-camping ordinance against multiple constitutional attacks.  Most recently, Mr. Dunn won a reversal of his client’s conviction for misappropriation of public funds in People v. Aldana (2009) 94 831, and he has dozens of other published opinions to his credit.

In 1991, Mr. Dunn became an Associate Professor at Orange County University School of Law and subsequently served for several years as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Whittier Law School and Trinity Law School in Santa Ana.  Since 1992, he has been an Adjunct Professor at Western State University College of Law, where he continues to teach advanced courses in criminal law and evidence.  Mr. Dunn was named Attorney of the Year by the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Orange County in 1988, and his written legal works have been published at both the state and national level.  He is an author of several chapters in California Criminal Law: Procedure and Practice, published annually by Continuing Education of the Bar, and has been listed in Who’s Who in American Law since 1998.  He recently completed working on his part of a new treatise on Scientific Evidence, published in October 2008 by Continuing Education of the Bar in Berkeley, California:  Scientific Evidence in California Criminal Cases.

In addition to his work as a lawyer, Mr. Dunn is an outstanding musician, has served as a member of the House of Representatives Rules Committee staff in Washington, D.C., and spent three years as Assistant Vice President and Branch Manager of Downey Savings and Loan Association in Rolling Hills Estates, California.