MY TURN: SOME TOUGH CHOICES IN TULIA, TEXAS

Your son has just been indicted for selling drugs to an undercover officer.
The district attorney offered the kid five years in exchange for a guilty
plea. But the boy won't take it. "Dad," he says, "I won't do time for
something I didn't do."

So the case goes to court, the undercover cop says the deal went down, the
kid says it didn't, and the jury has a decision to make.

Your son has no criminal record. Still, on the strength of a single
witness, the jury finds the defendant guilty and sentences your flesh and
blood to 20 years in prison. They pull the boy's well-muscled arms behind
his back, the handcuffs click into place, and the young man is led out of
the courtroom, tears and fire glistening in his eyes.

"It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people," the high
priest Caiaphas told his comrades, "so that the whole nation perish not."
The same equation has been scrawled across Tulia's moral chalkboard: "It is
better, Mr. Brookins, that your son be wrongfully convicted than for our
beloved community to be mocked in the pages of the New York Times."

In the state of Texas we don't send people to jail for having a bad
reputation. In a drug case, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that a specified dealer sold a specified narcotic to a specified buyer at a
specified time and place. If the state can't meet that burden the defendant
walks free. At least that's the theory.

When the prosecution, the judge and the defense all stipulate that your
witness lacks credibility under oath, the game is over. Which is why
special prosecutor Rod Hobson says he won´t prosecute the Tulia cases a
second time. There´s nothing left to prosecute.

Yet Tulia remains divided. Some damn the press for smearing us as a pack of
racists. If Freddie Brookins and his supporters had just kept their mouths
shut, it is suggested, a world of hurt could have been avoided. Sheriff
Stewart was just trying to rid our town of drugs and thugs, others argue,
where´s the harm in that?

When Larry Stewart lauded Tom Coleman as a "man of integrity and
professionalism," it became impossible for the people of Tulia to back away
from Coleman without turning on their beloved sheriff. Stewart and his
undercover man were joined at the hip. What the sheriff had joined together
no man could cleave asunder. To remain true to Stewart you had to believe
Coleman.

Larry Stewart should not bear the sole responsibility for foisting a
corrupt cop on an unsuspecting populace. But you don't see letters to the
editor defending Terry McEachern's integrity. And who celebrates Judge Ed
Self's decision to withhold the truth from jurors? Stewart owns the respect
and trust of the people of Tulia and only he can set the record straight.

Stewart hired an undercover agent without performing a credible background
check.

Stewart accepted Coleman's word that theft charges emanating from Cochran
County were groundless.

Stewart hailed Tom Coleman as a man of integrity and professionalism when
he knew it wasn't so.

As a representative of the state of Texas, Mr. Stewart knowingly withheld
damning information about Coleman from defense counsel.

And there's the rub. Mr. Stewart's position has become logically
unsupportable, morally unsustainable, and legally untenable. Those who
stand behind him can expect nothing but scorn from a watching world.

The citizens of Tulia must choose between two earnest Church of Christ
laymen: Larry Stewart and Freddie Brookins Sr. I suggest we pray for Mr.
Stewart and rejoice with Mr. Brookins.

To paraphrase the words of the Master: "It is right that he should make
merry, and be glad: for this his son was dead, and is alive again; he was
lost, and is found."

(An ordained minister, Dr. Alan Bean currently serves as executive director
of Friends of Justice, a Tulia-based criminal justice reform organization.)