INTERVIEWS, MEETINGS, HUGS FILL TULIA DEFENDANT'S FIRST DAY

TULIA, Texas - Gone was the indignity of the dingy-white two-piece
jumpsuit - the one he pulled on each morning during three years in
prison.

Freddie Brookins Jr. arrived at his parents' home here Monday evening
sporting a designer yellow polo - untucked to mid-thigh - over
style-faded blue jeans and pristine Chuck Taylor sneakers.

"It still feels weird," said Freddie Jr., 26, who never lost his shy
chuckle and wide grin. "You get used to putting on the same style of
clothes every day."

The simple wardrobe change, made a few hours after he walked freely
down the Swisher County Courthouse steps, was the first of several
symbolic reminders of the life he lost in 1999, when he became one of
46 Tulia residents arrested on drug charges based on the word of a
since-discredited undercover agent.

On Monday, a judge set him free while the justice system figures out
how to handle his case and those of 37 others who ultimately became
convicts.

In his first 24 hours outside a jailhouse, he rediscovered that little
things mattered most - the comfort of a soft chair, the safety of a
private shower, the warmth of an embrace from his wife, Terri.

His new environment, at times, was startling.

All the excitement proved to be too much for his appetite: he ate only
a convenience-store burrito. His old bedroom was too quiet for a man
accustomed to the prison cacophony of constant banging and yelling. He
spent Monday's early morning hours awake, channel surfing from his
couch, instead.

"I'll get used to it," he vowed.

His journey from penal living began early Monday when he and the other
defendants, shackled and chained, boarded an old white bus in
Amarillo. Along the 50-mile route, excited about what lay ahead,
Freddie Jr. peered out the windows at the golden, featureless
landscape, "trying to remember what it was like to be free," he said.

He arrived at the Swisher County Courthouse about 10
a.m.

After meeting with attorneys and an hour long hearing, he left the
building four hours later - for the first time in years, without a
guard, on his own.

Emotional embrace

Freddie Jr. hugged his mother, Pattie, father, Freddie Sr., and his
wife before holding his stepdaughter, Serena. The emotional reunion
was a "blessing," he later said. Then it was his own, personal
homecoming for which his wife of three years had prepared, cleaning
their house and packing the closet with new clothes. They were needed
because, in three years, the ones he left behind might not fit quite
right.

He later attended a celebration at the Swisher County Memorial Hall,
staying behind after most left to help clean up and stack chairs.

Much of his first 24 hours was spent at his parents' small, red brick
house, about a mile south of the courthouse.

It was there, among the joyful screaming of young nephews darting
about under the shade of a large mimosa tree, he felt most
comfortable. The Brookins clan is close - Freddie Jr.'s uncle has a
home next door and his grandparents live a block around the corner.

He could relax there, free in the open space, away from his small cell
and jailhouse job: cleaning showers used by death row inmates in the
Livingston prison where he spent the last year of his sentence in the
general population.

He stood amid a cool breeze and the proud gaze of Freddie Sr., a
former cattle broker who works the graveyard shift six days a week at
a meat packing plant in nearby Plainview, and long, frequent hugs with
Terri, 22, and Serena, 7.

Lots of happy faces

All evening Monday, friends and former schoolmates drove by - some in
tattered cars, music blaring, all waving in jubilation. In the yard,
next to the kids' old tricycles and skateboards, Freddie Brookins Sr.
noted small changes in his son, whose polite, respectful demeanor
survived his years behind bars.

He touched his son's slightly longer hair and picked at the back of
his neck, noting a small skin line that came with the few extra pounds
Freddie Jr. gained in prison.

Freddie Sr. said his son walks differently now, a little more timidly
- - perhaps from sometimes wearing ankle chains that restricted his movement.

Mixed with the exuberance of his new freedom, and the constant phone
calls from supporters, Freddie Jr. has a subtle wariness of the
townspeople - some of whom still believe that those released Monday
were guilty and just managed to play the system.

Always proclaiming his innocence, he was sent away to serve a 20-year
prison term in February 2000.

"Hopefully, everything is going to work out OK," Freddie Jr. said
during a live interview at noon Monday with cable news station MSNBC.
"I just want justice to be served."

The interview was one of many with television and radio that he
participated in on Monday and Tuesday, including sit-downs with Court
TV and the CBS' 60 Minutes.

Still, the media demands were a strain on his shy, country nature. His
shoulders drooped with frustration when Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., told him television
producers wanted more time with him Tuesday night.

"It's an incredibly weird thing to go from being locked up to walking
out to a throng of media," Ms. Gupta said.

Although Freddie Jr. and the others can come and go as a result of
Monday's hearing, they aren't completely free.

Unless the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturns their cases or
the state's parole and pardons board grants clemency, they'll have
trouble getting good jobs or receiving financial aid for higher
education, said Ms. Gupta, who on Monday gave Freddie Jr. a check for
$5,500, nearly half of his share of a settlement with Swisher County
officials, seeking to avoid lawsuits.

After a trip to see a brother in Killeen, and perhaps some time
fishing, Freddie Jr. said he hopes to get his old job back at a food
warehouse and to enroll at Amarillo College to study business
management in the fall.

He wants someday soon to leave Tulia.

For now, he is excited to be back at home with his family, whose
letters kept him going.

"A lot of tears have been shed," he said of his first day of freedom.
"But they have been happy tears."