TULIA DRUG BUST CRITICS VOW MORE PRESSURE

Supporters of 43 people arrested in Tulia after a 1999 drug sting will step
up their offensive after the new year, including new legal challenges,
increased national media scrutiny and possibly even a movie.

In a Thursday press conference, attorney Jeff Blackburn, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Amarillo Chapter
President Alphonso Vaughn and Randy Credico with the William Moses Kunstler
Fund for Racial Justice laid out their strategy for 2001.

Blackburn said the presidential election in Florida has overshadowed nearly
all news stories, but as soon as the race is decided, the Tulia case will
be back in the forefront.

The Tulia controversy stems from the 1999 arrests of 43 people - 40 of whom
were black - on drug charges following the undercover investigation of Tom
Coleman.

With the exception of two, all of the defendants have made plea bargains,
have had their charges dropped, or have been convicted, with sentences
ranging from probation to several hundred years in prison.

The number of blacks and the long sentences resulted in a swell of
opposition against the bust, leading to Blackburn filing a multi-million
dollar lawsuit against Coleman, 64th District Attorney Terry McEachern and
Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart.

Also, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation.

Blackburn said he will be filing several new cases in Swisher County court
challenging the drug convictions stemming from the case. He said he will
file more civil lawsuits, but he did not want to go to deeply into what
types of cases will be filed.

"This is a war, and I don't want to give away all my ammunition before we
fight the battle," Blackburn said.

Blackburn said that another aspect of the battle will be an increased
effort to impugn the reputations of Coleman and McEachern.

Another legal aspect of the fight will be efforts to get state agencies to
join the Department of Justice in investigating what happened in Tulia.

Credico, who has been instrumental in getting national media involved in
the Tulia case, said Monday's "20/20" report was only the beginning of the
national scrutiny of the bust, which he termed a "massacre" of the black
community in Tulia.

"If people in this area think this is going away, they're wrong," Credico
said. "Tulia has national resonance now. It used to be Remember the Alamo.
Now it's Remember Tulia, in terms of massacres."

Credico also said that plans are under way to create at least one movie and
a documentary about what happened in Tulia.

The ACLU will be doing its part to keep the Tulia controversy on the front
burner, with Tulia becoming one of the focal points of the organization's
efforts in the state, Vaughn said.

Plans are under way to gather officials from all state chapters of the
NAACP and even chapters in other states to come to Tulia and see what can
be done to help the defendants.

All of the efforts will work together in an attempt to free the accused,
who Blackburn said were unfairly jailed based solely upon the testimony of
Coleman.

"This is about a lot of human beings whose lives have been taken away on
the word of one man," Blackburn said. "We don't intend to rest until
justice is done for those people."