SMALL MEASURE OF JUSTICE IN TEXAS CASES

Tulia, Texas - The first time I ever saw a smile flicker across the face
of Freddie Brookins Sr. was on Monday.

Brookins is a compact, athletic-looking man in his late 40s. He could serve
as a model for that mythic American figure, the tough, soft-spoken,
no-nonsense father who puts in decades of hard work to build a reasonably
secure and comfortable life for his family.

Four years ago his son, Freddie Jr., a young man with no history of trouble
with the law, was arrested in the now-notorious Tulia drug sweep.

After taking out a home equity loan to get his son released on bail,
Brookins asked Freddie Jr. if he had, in fact, sold drugs to an undercover
agent named Tom Coleman, as authorities alleged.

Freddie Jr. said no, which created a situation.

Tremendously long prison sentences were already being handed down, and
everybody understood that there was more of a chance that the people of
Tulia would begin to fly than of a jury acquitting any of the blacks caught
in the sweep.

But prosecutors were willing to accept a guilty plea from Freddie Jr. in
exchange for a five-year sentence.

When I met Brookins last summer, Freddie Jr. was already in prison, doing
20 years. Brookins told me he couldn't bear to advise his son to take a
plea to something he hadn't done. So the young man went to trial in the
spring of 2000 and was convicted, as he knew he would be.

I got a chance to talk to Brookins on Monday, soon after Freddie Jr. and 11
other Tulia defendants were released on a special personal recognizance
bond. The drug cases have completely fallen apart and all convictions are
likely to be overturned.

I spotted Brookins taking a quiet moment alone.

"How you doing?" I asked.

That's when I saw the smile spread across his face. He took my hand in both
of his and gave it a great squeeze.

"He's finally home," he said. His voice was a little husky from cigarette
smoke, and still as quiet as ever. "It's a great day. A great day."

I asked if he was bitter.

"That's a hard question," Brookins said. "In a way I'm bitter. And in a way
I feel sorry for [the authorities]."

Also released on Monday was Joe Moore, a kindly 60-year-old pig farmer in
such poor health he can barely walk without assistance. He was smiling, too.

"Well, I had kind of a hard time for a while there in prison," he said,
"because I have sugar diabetes and I wasn't getting my medication there for
a while. I began to lose some of my sight. But then I got my medication, so
I'm all right now."

Except that he is destitute.

"I lost all my hogs because of this trouble," he said. "I lost everything,
really."

There seemed to be a special measure of cruelty in the treatment of Moore.

He was sentenced to 90 years in prison as an alleged drug kingpin, and at
one point was assigned to a maximum security unit populated by hard-core
predators. Even the inmates were astonished.

"They said to me, 'What are you doing here? You don't need to be in here,
old man."'

Rather than abusing Moore, the inmates looked out for him.

While there were smiles and hugs everywhere on Monday, if you paid close
attention, it was easy to see signs of discomfiture, wariness, anger and
even rage.

The events over the past four years were profoundly destructive. None of
the defendants I spoke to had solid plans or any money to speak of. Their
liberty had been taken away from them capriciously and, in their view,
almost as capriciously returned.

So Monday was a good day. But given everything that had happened, no one
was placing heavy bets on Tuesday.