STATE GETS BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS

The end of January and the beginning of February 2000 brought good news and
bad news for the state in its effort to prosecute 46 people charged in
connection with an 18-month undercover investigation in Tulia.

William Cash Love, 25, the only defendant accused of delivering more than
four grams of cocaine to undercover agent Tom Coleman, was sentenced Jan.
29, 2000, to 341 years on eight different narcotics charges.

Donald Smith, 31, and Freddie Brookins Jr., 24, were convicted, receiving
sentences of 14 years and 20 years, respectively.

At the same time, plea bargains were being accepted by several defendants.
District Attorney Terry McEachern offered pleas ranging from probation up
to 18 years, and many of the defendants decided to accept rather than take
their chances in front of a jury.

"Of course they were taking pleas," McEachern said. "If I had sold drugs in
Swisher County and got caught, I'd be looking to make the best deal I
could, too."

While a number of cases were being disposed of rapidly, the state had one
particularly thorny case on its hands. That case named Yul Bryant, 31, as
the defendant, charging him with delivering cocaine to Coleman on May 5, 1999.

The incident report dated Sept. 8, 1999, said a tall black male with bushy
type hair named Ewell sold Coleman a small bag of cocaine. But Bryant
stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall and has been bald for the past five years.

Further complicating matters was the appearance of a second incident report
dated Oct. 15, 1999, that deleted the height reference, said the suspect
had short-type hair and corrected the misspelling of the name. McEachern
said the filing of the revised incident report was highly inappropriate,
but he had been unable to determine who placed the report in Bryant's file.

Bryant continued to protest his innocence, pointing to the inaccurate
description, and McEachern dropped the charge on Feb. 15, 2000.

McEachern said his decision to drop the charges shows how serious Tulia
authorities are about making sure the people prosecuted in the drug sting
are actually guilty.

But Bryant's Amarillo lawyer, Jeff Blackburn, sees things differently.

"Right there, you had the first crack in the dam," Blackburn said. "If Tom
Coleman got this case wrong, how many others did he get wrong? How can you
trust his word when it was on his word that this innocent man was arrested?"

The picture further was clouded with revelations about Coleman's background
that came out around the same time. Coleman testified in several of the
early trials he had been the subject of an internal investigation at his
previous employer, but few details were available.

Coleman's background became more clear on Jan. 15, 2000, based on the
testimony of Lt. Mike Amos, head of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics
Trafficking Task Force in Amarillo. Amos, one of Coleman's supervisors,
testified during Brookins' trial that Coleman had been charged with theft
in Cochran County, his last law enforcement job before coming to Tulia.

According to the complaint from Cochran County, Coleman was charged with
abuse of official capacity and theft for using a county credit card to
purchase fuel for his personal vehicle.

Later testimony indicated Coleman took about five days off to settle the
matter, which included paying off $7,000 in old debts and making
restitution for $65, and the charges were dropped.

As complications arose in the courthouse, tensions were rising on the
outside as well, with the defendants and their supporters forming the
Friends of Justice to speak out forcefully against the drug busts and
attract attention to what they considered injustice.

One of the letters sent out by the Friends of Justice found its way into
the hands of Randy Credico, who works with the William Moses Kunstler Fund
for Racial Justice in New York.

Credico, a former standup comic who uses his connections with the media to
draw attention to racial issues, is passionately opposed to the current war
on drugs.

He admits he has a tendency to go overboard with inflammatory rhetoric,
such as comparing the whites of Tulia to the "good Germans in World War II
who stood by as the Jews were slaughtered."

Credico enticed numerous other news outlets to take a look at the busts,
including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

He also arranged for Friends of Justice organizers Charles Kiker and Gary
Gardner to be interviewed by phone on New York and national radio programs.

The Kunstler Fund was joined in Tulia by other national organizations,
including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The fiery rhetoric coming out of the defendants' camp and the attention
from the media didn't sit well with many people in Tulia, especially those
in the white community.

Many residents interpreted the media attention as an attack on their town,
and they started laying the groundwork for an organization to defend Tulia
and local law enforcement.

Their organization would have cause to fulfill its mission in the months of
September and October, as a lawsuit and a federal investigation were about
to put Tulia's law enforcement officers under the microscope.