DELIVERING A TULIA PROGRESS REPORT

Dear Tulia Fourteen, Hope you won't mind my writing to you in the
newspaper, but it seemed the easiest way to distribute a progress report
since you are being held in so many different units across the state.

You may remember last week that Texas Attorney General John Cornyn told me
he would try to call Swisher County DA Terry McEachern to talk about your
situation. (Cornyn told me he was powerless to get you out, but McEachern
could do it if he wanted.)

Well, McEachern told me this week that he was not in the office when Cornyn
phoned, and when he returned the call, Cornyn wasn't available.

I had hoped that these two fellows would figure out a way to release you
from prison, three years after the infamous raid. Considering that the lone
lawman responsible for your convictions has become the focus of a great
many questions about his methods, veracity and reputation. Considering
state laws have since been passed to protect others from being convicted as
you were, on the word of one man without any corroboration. Considering the
governor has since reined in drug task forces by putting them under control
of the Department of Public Safety. Ignoring 'pleas for justice' McEachern
first told me that the courts have all the authority over you now. When
pressed, he admitted he "could file a dismissal" that would get you out of
prison. But he does not intend to do that.

"I'm just going to follow the law and let the chips fall where the courts
decide," he said.

Will Harrell of the ACLU of Texas sent a memo Friday to the House Criminal
Jurisprudence Committee. He said the attorney general has a great deal more
power than he is claiming to have.

Harrell said Cornyn "has chosen to ignore the pleas for justice emanating
from Tulia, Texas, and elsewhere," and that he "is shirking his
responsibility in the most shameless manner."

Cornyn had told me that the most he could do in the matter is to assist the
U.S. Justice Department in the civil rights criminal investigation into the
Tulia drug bust of 1999.

A Justice Department official said last month that the investigation had
been closed. Then last week another official said it hasn't been closed.
And then U.S. senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton asked the
DOJ to reopen it if it was closed.

Harrell said that at the end of 2000, when the investigation first started,
federal officials were interviewing many people in Tulia. But after the
change of administrations in Washington, he said, there has not been "any
hint of an investigation. There has been no report. There have never been
any criminal charges brought against anyone. There was never a federal
judicial review of convictions called for by the U.S. DOJ."

President Bush was governor of Texas when that Tulia drug bust went down. I
think we can safely assume that he would prefer not to see any
investigation results that might show a drug task force abused your civil
rights under his watch.

As for the man Bush chose to head the Justice Department, U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft, maybe you heard about his plan to strip U.S.
citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants" of their constitutional rights and
hold them in internment camps without access to courts.

Digging through the politics Alan Bean, one of your hometown supporters in
the Friends of Justice organization that was born in response to the
outrageous drug bust and convictions, said that despite a lack of official
investigating, many people are asking many questions. He said reporters
from national media continue to write about the Tulia sting with fervor,
although it happened three years ago.

A fellow at the New York Times has written half a dozen Tulia columns
recently, and Bean said he has been contacted by People magazine and U.S.
News and World Report, and he heard that CBS was in Tulia a few days ago.

I know you must get awfully frustrated, sitting in prison because your
justice got buried under a big pile of politics, and people in power who
should have gotten you out long ago keep dumping more on the pile.

But as more and more people across the country learn about you, they are
picking up shovels to join others already digging through the politics,
searching for justice. Enough people, enough shovels, and sooner or later
it will be found.

Hold on to that hope.

Yours truly,