ONE DOWN

Billy Wafer, one of the defendants in the now notorious Tulia cocaine bust
of 1999, is a free man. Wafer had been accused, along with three dozen
other black defendants, of selling cocaine to undercover agent Tom Coleman
(see "Color of Justice," by Nate Blakeslee, June 23) in the tiny Panhandle
ranching town of Tulia, near Lubbock. Because Wafer was already on
probation at the time, his first stop was a revocation hearing held last
February, where he could have gotten twenty years.

But a judge declined to revoke his probation, because Wafer had a
rock-solid alibi.

He has been out of jail since that time, but not quite out of the woods.
Determined to stick to his guns (and his narc, despite mounting evidence
that Coleman may have been an unreliable witness), Swisher County D.A.
Terry McEachern declined to drop the charges against Wafer, forcing Wafer
to take his case to the Seventh Court of Appeals in Amarillo last month.

When Wafer finally got his hearing, McEachern didn't even show up, and the
charges were thrown out, once and for all. Wafer is now co-chair of Friends
of Justice, an organization formed in the wake of the bust to support the
defendants and raise awareness about their cases.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of Tulia law
enforcement continues.

According to sources in Tulia, FBI investigators have visited several
inmates already in prison as a result of the bust. According to at least
one inmate, the meetings went well, and investigators strongly suggested
that defendants would at least receive retrials.

In other Tulia drug war news, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported
December 3 that a U.S. district judge in Amarillo has finally ruled against
the Tulia school district in a three-year-old suit over random drug testing
at the school.

Judge Mary Lou Robinson (of Oprah WinfreyVeggie Libel law fame) found that
the policy violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unlawful search
and seizure.

The suit was filed by the son of Friends of Justice member Gary Gardner.
The elder Gardner (who argued the case himself) was the only member of the
school board to object to the policy, which covered all students in grades
7-12 involved in extracurricular activities, or about 80 percent of the
student body. (A similar suit in nearby Lockney, previously reported on in
these pages, is still pending.) The school board is expected to appeal the
decision. Similar policies, which single out kids involved in
extra-curricular activities as opposed to all students, have been held to
be constitutional by higher U.S. courts.