PRISONERS FREE AT LAST AS CONVICTIONS CRUMBLE

12 Await Reviews in Texas Cases

TULIA, Texas - For the first time in four years, Kizzie White's two small
children got to hug and cling to her Monday, without anyone interrupting to
say time's up.

For the first time in four years, Joe Moore had precisely what he wanted,
in the order he wanted it: barbecued ribs and a long, soapy, hot bath.

And for the first time in four years, Freddie Brookins Jr. started planning
his future again, one he hopes will include the college scholarship that
slipped from his grasp in 1999.

The three were among 12 people - 11 of them black - who walked free on bail
Monday in this tiny Texas panhandle town after four years in prison on drug
convictions that a Texas judge and prosecutors now agree were a travesty of
justice based on uncorroborated testimony from a racist white police officer.

Two weeks ago, Texas' governor signed a bill allowing them to be released
pending an appeals court's review, cutting short sentences ranging from 20
to 90 years.

"It feels so good," said White, 26, who beamed as her 9-year-old daughter,
Roneisha, and 6-year-old son, Cashawn, nuzzled her, staying close to the
mother they had seen briefly just eight times in four years. "I'm going to
be the best mother I can to them."

A few feet away stood Moore, a 60-year-old hog farmer and gigantic man
surrounded by television cameras and supported by his attorney. Illiterate,
diabetic and barely able to walk without the attorney's aid, Moore, who was
serving a 90-year sentence, clutched a grocery bag containing shampoo,
conditioner and soap, and declared, "Everything's all right now!"

Lightning-Quick Trials

The case began before dawn July 23, 1999, when masked police officers began
rounding up 46 people in Tulia, all but seven of them black. In a town of
fewer than 5,000 people, the arrests represented nearly 10 percent of the
black population.

In eight lightning-quick trials, juries with virtually no black members
handed down blisteringly tough sentences - though the sweeps turned up no
drugs, weapons, paraphernalia or other signs of drug dealing. That
persuaded most of the other defendants to plead guilty, though many of them
swore they had never sold powdered cocaine to the undercover police
officer, an itinerant Texas lawman named Tom Coleman.

One other convict from Tulia is expected to go free this month. Three
imprisoned on charges from other jurisdictions will remain locked up for
now. Of the 38 convicted, 25 served prison sentences; nine had been
released before Monday.

Although all the convictions will stand until they are vacated by a pardon
from the governor or overturned on review, Monday's release was an
earthquake for Tulia and a resounding victory for the battalion of
attorneys from Washington, New York and Texas who donated millions of
dollars' worth of legal work on behalf of the convicts.

At least 16 out-of-town defense lawyers and paralegals - from the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York as well as upper- crust East
Coast firms such as Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering; Hogan & Hartson; and
Sullivan & Cromwell - crowded into the courtroom.

Those who spoke in support of releasing the convicts on their own
recognizance denounced the Tulia busts as a symptom of systemic ills as
well as a small-town legal system gone haywire.

"It is because of a grave failure of the criminal justice system that these
people were robbed of four years of their lives," said Vanita Gupta of the
NAACP legal defense fund.

Several singled out Coleman, who Texas Judge Ron Chapman in April concluded
had "falsified reports, misrepresented the nature and extent of his
investigative work and misidentified various defendants during his
investigation." Coleman faces perjury charges stemming from another case.

As the lawyers spoke, county Sheriff Larry Stewart, who hired Coleman and
lauded him publicly, watched impassively by the entrance to the courtroom.
He wouldn't comment, other than to say Tulia has been unfairly portrayed as
a racist, remote place - a widespread view among the town's white residents.

Chapman recommended to Texas' highest criminal appeals court in April that
the convictions be thrown out. On Monday, he briefly lectured the 12
convicts to "make better choices" and then freed them on bail.

The crowd in the courtroom burst into applause, and friends and relatives
mobbed the jury box, embracing and kissing the newly liberated.

Defense attorneys urged their freed clients to seek new lives outside
Tulia, where many whites are bitter, believing most of the convicts to be
guilty. "There's too much pain for them to live here right now," Gupta said.

Convicts To Receive Payments

As part of a deal in April to move for the dismissal of the cases, Swisher
County paid $250,000 for an agreement that the convicts would not sue
county officials. From that sum, each of the 12 freed Monday is likely to
receive $12,000, with lesser amounts, ranging from $1,000 to $6,000, going
to those previously released who faced more lenient sentences.

Attorneys for the convicts said those amounts were a token of what would be
sought in damages.

Nonetheless, nearly all those freed Monday, and many of their relatives,
insisted they neither hated Tulia nor were bitter about what happened -
although they acknowledged anger at Coleman.