Tulia In-Depth Look, Part 2a of 5

STING TURNS SOUR

Everything seemed to be going the way it was supposed to in the days after
the indictment of 46 alleged Tulia drug dealers in July 1999. But the seeds
of discontent were being sown by a 55-year-old farmer with a penchant for
causing headaches among Tulia's officials.

That farmer, Gary Gardner, was reading the press accounts of the drug busts
from his home in Vigo Park Village northeast of Tulia, and alarm bells were
going off in his head.

"There were several aspects of the drug sting operation that raised the
hackles on the back of my neck," said the hulking, perpetually overall-clad
Gardner. "The big thing was the inordinate amount of publicity and the
prejudicial statements given by the officers. It ain't the sheriff's
(Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart) job or the DA's (District Attorney
Terry McEachern) job to talk bad about these kids."

Gardner, who admits he is barely in the farming business and would have
declared bankruptcy long ago if he weren't so stubborn, is a bit of an
enigma. He plays the role of ignorant redneck to the hilt and uses racial
epithets to refer to the blacks he defends.

But beneath the dim-bulb facade hides a sly intelligence and a malicious
glee at tweaking the nose of authority, which shows when he reflects on the
trouble he's managed to stir up over the years.

Gardner has been fighting the power structure in Tulia for years.

He started by providing amateur legal advice on a few criminal cases and
continued through a 1997 lawsuit his son filed against a mandatory
drug-testing policy instituted by the Tulia Independent School District.

Gardner can only walk a few steps without getting out of breath but seems
to have boundless energy when charging to the defense of the people
arrested in the drug sting. But he admits a big part of the reason he got
involved in the drug busts was his family's battle against drug testing and
his disdain for the way the war on drugs is handled.

Gardner declared his opposition to the drug busts in an act he called
"throwing the satchel charge through the window." He sent letters critical
of the busts that advised change of venue motions to all the defendants and
forwarded copies to the judge and district attorney. That, he said, was
"when all hell broke loose."

About then, the first few defendants, unable to obtain a change of venue,
started facing Swisher County juries in court and came away with long
sentences.

Joe Welton Moore, 58, was sentenced Dec. 15, 1999, to 90 years in prison on
a second-degree felony charge of delivery of cocaine, which was enhanced to
a first-degree felony because of Moore's prior criminal history.

Christopher E. Jackson, 18, got 35 years for three delivery charges on Jan.
12, 2000.

It was during the first trials that Gardner met up with a kindred soul in
Charles Kiker, who would help him in the fight to bring publicity to what
they saw as the unfair arrests of about 10 percent of Tulia's black population.

The 67-year-old Kiker had just retired from 40 years as a pastor in various
locales across the country, returning to Swisher County, where he was born
and lived until he was 25 years old.

Kiker was perfectly situated to get involved in the drug busts, having cut
his teeth on racial tension in Kansas City, Kan., which he refers to as his
"racial training ground." The neighborhood Kiker's church served in Kansas
City was transitioning from a largely working-class white population to a
minority area, and the church wasn't serving the needs of its new minority
flock. Kiker battled with the church to get it to change its practices, a
battle he says made him acutely aware of racial issues.

Kiker, along with his wife, Patricia, and his daughter and son-in-law,
Nancy and Alan Bean, teamed up with Gardner to help organize the defendants
and their families into a group that would come to be known as the Friends
of Justice. They started doing research. They started writing letters. And
they started to question whether racism was involved in the drug busts.

They questioned how a town of 5,000 people could support 46 drug dealers.
They asked why nearly all of the black defendants were charged with
delivering powder cocaine, a drug generally associated with white,
upper-class users, instead of the cheaper, more prevalent crack cocaine.

They asked how the defendants could be convicted based solely on the word
of undercover agent Tom Coleman and a tiny bag of cocaine used as evidence.

But mostly they asked why 39 of the defendants were black. How could an
investigation in a town with a black population of about 10 percent yield
arrests with almost more than 80 percent blacks?

The public response in Tulia wasn't great at first. Many thought it was
just that crazy old farmer in Vigo Park stirring up trouble again, along
with a group of "outsiders" - a term applied to the Beans and Kikers over
and over again, despite Charles Kiker having grown up in Swisher County and
Nancy Bean having once won Little Miss Tulia.

But the reaction was about to grow exponentially. Allegations against the
popular local sheriff and accusations of racism against the populace of
Tulia would spur the locals to defend their hometown and institutions.

The next few months would see the formation of competing groups, one
supporting law enforcement, the other supporting the defendants. The
conflict would play out with competing rallies, battles of letters in the
local newspapers and an onslaught of national media attention.

Things were about to heat up on the legal front as well. One of the state's
cases would fall apart, and allegations of improprieties in Coleman's
background, which were only hinted at in early trials, would become public.