CONVICTION NO LONGER A SIGN OF GUILT

The criminal justice system in Texas has lost some of its swagger. While
those living in other parts of the country still operate under the notion
that one is innocent until proved guilty, here in the Lone Star State,
frankly, we no longer are sure who is innocent and who is guilty. They
aren't sure in the Texas Panhandle town of Tulia, where a judge has
recommended that the state Court of Criminal Appeals overturn the
convictions of 38 drug defendants - most of them African-Americans -
because they were based solely on the testimony of a white officer the
judge deemed "simply not a credible witness under oath." It didn't help
that the undercover man, Tom Coleman, also worked alone, kept scant notes
and had a foul habit of tossing about the "n-word."

Nor are they sure in the "Big D." It has been almost 16 months since Dallas
Police Chief Terrell Bolton admitted that what police thought were bricks
of cocaine seized as evidence in drug cases actually turned out to be
ground Sheetrock. Prosecutors dismissed 86 drug cases and released dozens
of defendants - all of them Mexican immigrants or legal residents - with
not so much as a lo siento mucho (I am very sorry).

Yet it still isn't clear who is to blame for the big scandal in the Dallas
Police Department. In fact, the more time that passes, the fuzzier the
picture becomes.

One reason for that is Chief Bolton. The chief has first-rate survival
skills, and he seems far less interested in finding out what went wrong
than in saving his skin. That is why he didn't launch an internal
investigation - despite earlier claims that he had - in deference, he says,
to an interminable FBI probe. (A Justice Department spokesman told me
several months ago that local police don't necessarily have to defer to the
feds.)

Chief Bolton did find it necessary, however, to go before a group of
Mexican-American officials a few months after the scandal broke. There -
according to several who were in the room - the chief tried to reassure the
group that the press was on a witch hunt and that the entire affair had
been blown out of proportion.

Stories like that help convince me that Chief Bolton has at least two
convictions - that he should be police chief and that he shouldn't have to
vacate the office until he is good and ready.

And so it seems what we have in Dallas is a remorseless cop who finds
injustice easier to tolerate than unemployment.

Yet Chief Bolton isn't the only city official willing to treat as minor
inconveniences the fact that people were wrongly imprisoned, that scores of
lives were wrecked and that Mexican immigrants who don't speak English have
been marked as "easy prey" for every manner of bad guys, con men and
scoundrels.

The Dallas City Council also has been reluctant to comment on the case. And
that may be because - according to one council member - there is real
disagreement as to whether Chief Bolton should be fired or even
disciplined. The council member claims that her Hispanic and
African-American colleagues are protective of the city's first black police
chief and the man who supervises him, Ted Benavides, the city's first
Hispanic city manager. I recently confirmed as much during candidate
interviews conducted by The Dallas Morning News editorial board in advance
of the May 3 election.

There is at least one public official who doesn't share the minority
council members' support for Chief Bolton and the department. Dallas County
District Attorney Bill Hill recently has given several interviews in which
he confessed his growing distrust of the department and doubts about Chief
Bolton's credibility. The roots lie in what Mr. Hill claims was the delay
by police in filling his office's request for documents related to the fake
drug cases. He also told the editorial board that he doesn't believe much
of what he hears coming out of the department these days.

Anyone still think this is just about a bunch of Mexican immigrants tossed
in jail on trumped-up drug charges? That would be enough in my book. But
even if it isn't enough in yours, here is something to chew on.

Police and prosecutors are partners in crime fighting. And, one imagines,
it must be mighty hard for prosecutors to build cases and put criminals in
jail when they aren't 100 percent sure that what police are telling them is
the truth.

The same lesson applied in Tulia. And make no mistake, until these sorts of
wrongs are corrected, the rest of us never again can be sure about
distinguishing guilt from innocence.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News.