REVERSAL OF 38 DRUG CASES URGED

Officer Accused of Racial Prejudice

TULTA~ Texas - The drug con-victions of 38 mostly black defen-dants from a
farm town in the Texas Panhandle should be thrown out because they were
based on ques-tionable testimony from a single undercover agent accused of
racial prejudice, a judge said Tuesday.

Retired state district Judge Ron Chapman urged the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals to grant new trials to everyone convicted in the case that has
prompted investiga-tions by the Justice Department and Texas attorney general.

"It is stipulated by all parties and approved by the court that Tom Coleman
is simply not a credible 'witness under oath," Chapman said of the agent.

The case involved 1999 cocaine busts in this predominantly white town of
5,000 people. Coleman, 43, claimed he bought drugs from the defendants
during an 18-month investigation in which he worked alone and used no audio
or video surveillance.

But no drugs were ever found during the arrests and little or no
corroborating evidence was intro-duced at trial. The Texas American Civil
Liberties Union suggested discrimination was behind the arrests, intended
to cleanse Tulia of its black population. Coleman is white.

Coleman, who had been due to resume testimony at the hearing Tuesday, was
not in the courthouse when the judge announced his recommendation.

Coleman came to Tulia, midway between Lubbock and Amarillo, in late 1997.
He was a Texas Ranger's son and had been a Pecos police of-ficer and
Cochran County sheriffs deputy, though he left that job in 1996 under
questionable circum-stances.

On July 23, 1999, a drug task force pulled suspects from their beds and
paraded them, still in their nightclothes, across the courthouse lawn in
front of televi-sion cameras. Coleman took great pride in the bust.

"I walked in there with "police" written across my vest and pulled off my
mask and they just stared at me with their mouths open," he told the
Amarillo Globe-News. "A lot of them just kept saying, 'I can't believe
you're a cop. No way you're a cop.' It was just perfect."

In all, 46 people were arrested, 39 of them black. Thirteen are still in
prison and others served time or were sentenced to probation. Seven were
convicted; 26 en-tered pleas and got probation or prison terms; two pleaded
guilty to misdemeanors and were fined, cases against 10 were dismissed and
the disposition of one could not immediately be determined.

Coleman no longer works in law enforcement or for Swisher County.

Law enforcement witnesses testified that he regularly used a racial epithet
and had disciplinary problems. Coleman said the epithet was a greeting that
be and his friends used.