LEGISLATION AIMS TO PREVENT ANOTHER TULIA DRUG SWEEP

Legislation that would make it more difficult for police to rely on
undercover officers and informants to get convictions is needed to
stop the kind of mass arrests of African Americans that occurred in
1999 in Tulia and last year in Hearne, rights groups and legislators
said at a news conference and in committee hearings Monday.

Two of the bills =F3 one in the House and one in the Senate =F3 would
require police to produce more evidence than just the testimony of an
undercover agent to get a conviction against a defendant.

Two other bills would make it easier for defendants to introduce
evidence at trial that they say would help show their innocence. And
another two would require the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement
Officer Standards and Education to disclose the names of officers who
were fired or who resigned because they were involved in a crime or
abuse of authority.

In the Panhandle town of Tulia in 1999, 43 people =F3 40 of them black,
16 percent of the town's African Americans =F3 were arrested as part of
a drug investigation that relied largely on the work of one
undercover officer. Since then, lawsuits have been filed and a formal
complaint lodged with the U.S. Department of Justice against the
Swisher County sheriff's office and the undercover officer.

Will Harrell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union in Texas, said that in a similar undercover drug operation in
the East Texas town of Hearne a year ago, 38 African Americans and no
whites were charged.

Harrell said that in both towns, many of the defendants, though
innocent, felt pressured to take plea bargains because they had
little or no effective legal representation. Some, he said, were
forced to remain in jail for months because the county system for
providing lawyers for poor people was overwhelmed. And in both towns
there are serious questions about the credibility of the undercover
agents, he said.

=46reddie Brookins of Tulia, whose son was arrested, convicted and
sentenced to 20 years in prison despite having no previous trouble
with the law, said at the news conference that the courts should not
be able "to take one person's word without anything to back it up."

The authors of the legislation are Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San
Antonio, and Rep. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen. Supporting the bills are
the ACLU, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People and the National Council of La Raza.

Prosecutors are critical of the legislation. Although he took no
stand on what happened in Tulia and Hearne, Assistant District
Attorney Chuck Knoll of Harris County said that some of the bills
would give undercover police officers less credibility in court than
other citizens. And the bills making it easier for defendants to
introduce evidence in their favor would open the door to "idiot
shrinks" concocting psychological defenses and lie detector tests, he
said.

Robertson County District Attorney John Paschall, who is overseeing
the Hearne prosecutions, defended the operation in a telephone
interview and called the proposed legislation ridiculous. It's the
jury's job, he said, to weigh the merits of testimony.