FALSE DRUG CONVICTIONS MAY LINGER

DA's Office Says It Has No Time To Review Old Cases For Injustice

Thomas Wayne Williams was sitting in prison for the rest of his life early
in 2000, alone in his belief that two Dallas police officers had framed him
on drug charges because he couldn't pay them $5,000 in a street shakedown.

Then, in April of that year, the same Dallas County district attorney's
office that put him in prison won convictions for the two police officers -
Quentis Roper and Daniel Maples - on charges that they ripped off more than
$125,000 from drug dealers and undocumented immigrants, often falsifying
reports in the process.

Mr. Williams and at least two others imprisoned on long sentences on the
strength of the officers' testimony later won commutations from the
governor. Another 20 people had cases dismissed, many because their
testimony against the two officers was needed.

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The district attorney's office didn't seek out all who had been convicted,
citing a lack of staff and saying it was up to the prisoners to act on
their own cases.

Two former prosecutors, Clark Birdsall and Heath Harris, said other
prisoners might still be in jail because the district attorney's office
didn't investigate whether other cases made by the officers should have
been thrown out.

"I don't think we got them all," said Mr. Birdsall, now an attorney in
private practice. "There could be people down in the pen who aren't aware
of the Maples trial or the Roper trial, and so we never heard from them."

Mr. Harris, another former prosecutor who worked on the corruption cases,
said it was feared there would be an onslaught of prisoners seeking
exoneration after the trials of the two officers.

"A big fear was once this hit the news that people would start making false
allegations that money had been taken from them and they were set up," said
Mr. Harris, who also now works as a private attorney.

First Assistant District Attorney Mike Carnes, in a recent interview, said
District Attorney Bill Hill's policy is to not seek out possible wrongful
convictions even when cases from the same questionable origins have been
thrown out - a policy some legal experts say is flawed.

Such cases will get such consideration only if an inmate or an attorney
brings them forward, Mr. Carnes said.

"It's up to the individual defendant," he said. "We can't do it for them.
It's incumbent on them to come up with evidence that they were wrongly
accused."

He said the policy extends to a series of Dallas police drug cases that
were filed with the help of three confidential informants who have pleaded
guilty to planting fake evidence on dozens of people.

Mr. Hill's office has dismissed about 80 so-called fake drugs cases, some
of which were pending when they were discovered with laboratory analyses
and which would have relied on discredited informants to be prosecuted.
Other cases thrown out were those in which defense attorneys pushed for lab
tests and dismissal on other grounds.

Mr. Carnes said his office would not seek out any other cases in which the
confidential informants or police officers were involved beyond those cases
that were pending or brought to his attention.

"Believe me, we are shorthanded," he said. "We do not have the time to do
much other than what is required each day in court."

Some legal experts said the policy violates a fundamental ethical tenet -
that prosecutors are obligated to do all they can to seek justice and look
for injustices if there is reasonable cause to suspect any exist.

Bruce Green, Stein professor of law at Fordham University School of Law,
has written extensively about prosecutor ethics. He said there is no legal
canon that requires district attorneys to seek out wrongful convictions
when alerted to their probability.

But expecting defense attorneys to return to their old cases is
unacceptable because they might have retired, moved or died, Mr. Green and
other analysts said.

"Here you have police officers where it's known they wrongly jailed
people," he said. "To not examine that is not carrying out your obligation
as a prosecutor, which is to seek justice. It's convicting guilty people
but not convicting innocent people."

Mr. Hill's office did seek the dismissal of cases against at least 20
people arrested by Mr. Maples and Mr. Roper. Court records show that many
of those were cleared because prosecutors needed testimony against the
officers.

Mr. Birdsall and Mr. Harris said that during the prosecutions of Mr. Roper
and Mr. Maples two years ago, prosecutors were authorized to dismiss only
cases in which the two discredited officers could not be allowed to
testify. They also said they were told to get long prison sentences thrown
out for two prisoners, but only because they needed the two men as
prosecution witnesses.

Anthony Lynn Curlin, convicted of dealing drugs and sentenced to 30 years
in 1997, was set free during the April 2000 trial of Mr. Roper on grounds
that the officer's testimony at his trial was tainted. John Harp, who was
serving 15 years on a drug charge, was freed on similar grounds.

Professor Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University,
said a district attorney with evidence of even one tainted case is
obligated to mount a full investigation of all other cases from the same
origin.

"Just addressing the cases that were pending, ... where the chances of
getting a conviction is slimmest, is an arbitrary category," he said. "If
his office has won a false conviction, it's his job to discover it and
correct it."

Mr. Williams' case was already closed when Mr. Hill's office was dismissing
pending cases, and prosecutors were unaware that he existed until, using
news clippings, he persuaded a skeptical appellate attorney to take up his
cause, the attorney and Mr. Birdsall said.

A twice-convicted felon, Mr. Williams was convicted in 1999 on drug charges
and wound up with a life sentence under the state's "three strikes" law
because of testimony by the two officers. He won release after educating
himself in the prison law library and lobbying ceaselessly soon after the
two officers were convicted. Mr. Roper was sentenced to 17 years in prison;
Mr. Maples got two years.

Mr. Birdsall, who recommended that Mr. Williams' sentence be thrown out,
said Mr. Williams' case would not have been reviewed if he had not brought
it forward.

"I used to lie on my bottom bunk and look up and wonder how in the world,
at age 40, can I live all that time like this, knowing that these two guys
done got clean away with it," Mr. Williams said. "It was my word against
theirs, and they were police."

Mr. Williams, who was freed in June 2000, is suing the two former officers
and the city in federal court, seeking damages for wrongful arrest. He says
he has stayed out of trouble, is engaged and has found honest work.

But he said the close brush with a life sentence in prison still has him
rattled, and he shies away from people in uniforms.

"I'm just trying to be recognized as a citizen," he said.