AFTER DRUG BUST GOES AWRY, ACLU ALLEGES RACISM

No one disputes that the confidential informant who claimed he bought drugs
from 28 black people in the community of Hearne was trouble.

Robertson County District Attorney John Paschall said the informant,
Derrick Megress, stole some of the cocaine he was supposed to turn over to
police as evidence, masking the thefts with flour. Megress also probably
pocketed some of the money he was supposed to use to buy drugs, Paschall said.

"Unfortunately, we can't get Baptist ministers to go make drug busts,"
Paschall said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, however, believes there is something
more sinister involved in the November 2000 drug investigation: racism. The
ACLU intends to file a lawsuit today in U.S. District Court in Austin
alleging the drug bust was just the latest in a long line conducted by the
South Central Texas Regional Narcotics Task Force and Robertson County
officials that targeted blacks.

"Individuals were targeted (in this bust) and in years past based on their
race and despite the fact that they were innocent. It's intentional," said
Graham Boyd, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project.

"The statistics are quite staggering," Boyd said. "In the arrests in
November of 2000, 15 percent of the young black men in town (were picked
up). A similar number have been arrested in each and every year for the
last 10 years."

The ACLU compares the Hearne bust to the now-infamous 1999 drug sting in
the Panhandle community of Tulia, where a white undercover police officer
targeted the town's small black population. In a town of 4,600, the Tulia
drug sweep netted 46 arrests, almost all of them black, even though blacks
make up just 5 percent of the town's population. That investigation has
since been discredited.

By comparison, Hearne is a diverse community of 5,000 just north of College
Station on U.S. 190. Blacks make up 45 percent of the population, but the
county district attorney and commanders of the drug task force are white,
the ACLU points out.

The investigation that culminated in November 2000 with the arrests of 28
people on felony charges of possessing or distributing crack cocaine began
more than six months earlier with a letter from Megress, Paschall said. At
the time, Megress was in the Robertson County Jail, accused of burglarizing
a home.

Megress wrote the drug task force and said he could help them with an
investigation in exchange for leniency in his case. Paschall offered
Megress a sentence of probation on the burglary charge if Megress gathered
evidence for drug cases against 20 people.

Paschall said task force officers tried to protect the integrity of the
investigation. Police outfitted Megress with a hidden tape recorder and
searched him before and after the buys, Paschall said.

Megress turned in his evidence, a Robertson County grand jury returned
indictments and the defendants were rounded up.

Regina Kelly, 25, said officers came for her the evening of Nov. 2, 2000,
at the restaurant where she was a waitress.

The mother of four sat in jail for 20 days before her bail was lowered from
$70,000 to $10,000. She was released after her mother posted $1,000 and the
title to her property.

Kelly insists she never bought or sold drugs. Her court-appointed attorney
urged her to enter into a plea bargain with prosecutors and accept a
sentence of probation. She refused.

Eight other defendants took the offer, according to Robertson County
records. One was sentenced to eight years in prison; seven others received
probation. Problems with the case became apparent when one man, Corvian
Workman, took his case to trial.

The tape Megress made of an alleged drug buy with Workman was
unintelligible. The jury that heard the evidence against Workman could not
reach a verdict.

"I've been prosecuting long enough to know if the jury is hung up 11-1 for
acquittal you've got a problem," Paschall said.

Paschall interviewed jurors after the case. They told him they didn't
believe Megress.

After the trial, Paschall asked Megress to take a polygraph test in which
he was asked whether he stole drugs or money. Megress failed, Paschall
said. Paschall said he dismissed the cases against 17 defendants. The
disposition of the remaining cases was unavailable.

Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU in Texas, said Paschall
dropped the cases after the ACLU complained about the investigation to the
U.S. attorney general. Paschall denies that was the reason.

"I didn't have any pressure from anybody. I did what I thought was right,"
he said.

Paschall also denies the ACLU's charge that the task force is motivated by
race.

"If you have a black informant, if he is going to buy drugs from people he
knows, they are going to happen to be black drug dealers," he said.

Paschall said he has no intention of reopening the cases against the seven
people who pleaded guilty and got sentences of probation. The defendants
admitted selling drugs, he said.

But even those who were not convicted have been affected.

"Even though it was dismissed it is hard for me to get a decent job because
that is on my record," Kelly said. "Some people look at you differently.
You're not the same person they knew. They think, 'Maybe she was a drug
dealer.' "