AN OFFICER'S WORD CAN WRECK LIVES, DESTROY FAMILIES

Across the country, many miscarriages of justice are occurring as
cases are based on the uncorroborated, unsubstantiated testimony of
individual police officers working undercover in drug-trafficking cases.

It seems impossible that ordinary citizens could be hit with prison
sentences of 20, 60 and 99 years based on a single person's testimony,
even if that person is a police officer.

But it's much more common than any of us would like to
believe.

Consider what happened to Michelle Williams, one of 43 people arrested
during a now-famous drug bust on July 23, 1999, in the tiny Texas
Panhandle town of Tulia.

Of the 43 people arrested that day, 39 were African American, an
alarming and outrageous percentage given the fact that the town has
fewer than 300 black residents.

"I was sound asleep in bed in my home. It was about 6:30 a.m. and
suddenly a whole bunch of police officer knocked on my door. Next
thing I know it, I'm taken from my four children and arrested for
selling three packages of cocaine. I had no idea what was happening.
I've never sold cocaine in my life," Williams said.

Williams was one of the few defendants who managed to make her bail of
$60,000.

Once out of jail, she began baby-sitting for friends who were arrested
the same day and unable to make bond. To her astonishment, she soon
found herself taking care of as many 35 children -- children whose
lives had been turned upside down because one lone man said their
parents were drug traffickers.

Exactly why either the district attorney or the juries in Tulia
believed Tom Coleman, the undercover police officer who worked for 18
months in Tulia with no supervision whatsoever, is a great mystery and
national embarrassment.

Coleman did not wear a wire or provide any corroboration from any
eyewitness in any of the cases. None of the suspects had drugs or
weapons on them when they were arrested. Much of what he has said
about these cases later turned out to be a lie.

Nevertheless, on the strength of his lies, the first defendants in the
Tulia trials received extremely harsh sentences.

Williams had no money to hire a lawyer and no faith in her
court-appointed lawyer.

"So even though I wasn't guilty, I accepted a plea bargain and was
sentenced to eight years in prison. I never would have believed such a
thing could happen, but it did," Williams said.

She served three years behind bars -- "It felt more like 300," she
saaid -- and was released on parole Nov. 23. Now she's working at a
torttilla factory in Tulia, a job she's extremely grateful to have,
and doing all she can to try to get new trials for the 13 defendants
still in jail.

The Tulia case has received a lot of national attention. Williams
wants to use that attention to press state legislatures to pass laws
requiring corroboration for peace officers who work undercover in drug
stings. Few states have such laws.

Last year, in response to the Tulia scandal, the Texas Legislature
passed a bill requiring corroboration for confidential informants, but
not for peace officers. As a practical matter, the bill would not have
done a thing to stop the Tulia scandal. Coleman, after all, was a
police officer, not an informant.

However, a bill has been filed in Texas to require corroboration for
police officers as well.

The reason this bill may actually pass in Texas is because of the
number and extent of such scandals. In Houston, an undercover police
officer was arrested last year for robbing drug dealers. As a result,
more than 20 cases that this officer was involved in were dismissed.

In 2001 in Dallas, confidential informants set up 86 defendants --
maany of them Mexican American -- by planting false cocaine on them and
then making arrests. Those 86 either had their charges dropped or were
released from prison.

Incredibly, the Tulia 13 remain behind bars.

Meanwhile, Williams continues to hold out hope.

"We were all wrongly accused," said Williams, "but I know that justice
will be done. I just hate it 'cause a lot of families have been just
torn apart over all this, including my own."