SENATE COMMITTEE URGES THE RELEASE OF TULIA 13

AUSTIN -- With special prosecutors endorsing the action, the Senate
Criminal Justice Committee on Monday approved a bill to allow the release
of 13 people who are still in prison because of the controversial Tulia
drug sting.

Senate Bill 1948, which Sen. John Whitmire filed late last week, would
permit a district judge in Swisher County to release the 13 on bond while
the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals deliberates their cases.

"We are testifying for this bill," said Rod Hobson, a lawyer from Lubbock
assigned as a special prosecutor to help Swisher County with the cases. He
was joined by Dallas lawyer John Nation, also a special prosecutor.

Nation said the legislation was necessary because it could take the Court
of Criminal Appeals many months to review the findings and related
documents submitted after evidentiary hearings discredited the
prosecution's only witness against the Tulia defendants.

Whitmire, D-Houston, agreed.

"I want these folks out is the bottom line, like yesterday," he said.

Whitmire's bill now goes to the full Senate. Approval there would send it
to the House in the closing weeks of the legislative session, which ends
June 2.

If approved by two-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds of the House and
signed by the governor, the bill would go into effect immediately. If
approved by lesser margins, it would go into effect Sept. 1.

Forty-six Tulia residents, 39 of whom are black, were arrested in the 1999
drug sting, and 38 were convicted on the testimony of since-discredited
undercover officer Tom Coleman.

Following complaints that the arrests were racially motivated, evidentiary
hearings were held in four of the cases in March but were halted early when
prosecutors stipulated that Coleman was not a credible witness.

Retired state District Judge Ron Chapman of Dallas, who presided over the
hearings, recommended that the Court of Criminal Appeals overturn all 38
convictions and order new trials.

Hobson said the cases would be dismissed if new trials were ordered.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who two years ago sponsored a law aimed at
improving legal representation for low-income criminal defendants, said the
system was still in need of improvement.

He credited the media for calling lawmakers' attention to the Tulia
convictions and questioned how often similar incidents happened in other
counties because of poor or inadequate work by defense lawyers.

"If they had arrested three instead of 38, this wouldn't have been on the
radar screen," Ellis said.

The Rev. Charles Kiker, a Tulia resident who helped attract media attention
to the sting, agreed.

"If they had picked up three or five people (in the sting), it wouldn't
have gotten our attention," he said. "I commend you (senators) for trying
to right this wrong."

In his report to the appellate court, Chapman cited Coleman's "blatant
perjury" during the Tulia prosecutions and said that "it would be a
travesty of justice to permit ... the convictions to stand."

Coleman has since been indicted on three counts of perjury stemming from
his testimony during the March hearings.