TAINTED DRUG SWEEP NETS BLACKS

Officer's Lies Exposed In Small Town

TULIA, Texas - What happened here is not simply a study in black and
white, despite the skin colors of its characters. It is not purely a
story of stupidity and arrogance, though both are prevalent.

It is a tragedy of small minds and made-up crimes that eventually
created one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Texas history. If
it weren't so awful, some of what happened in this tiny town might be
comical, given the buffoonish protagonist and his inability to keep
his stories straight.

Thomas Roland Coleman, the son of a locally famous Texas Ranger, drove
into this dried-up place and cruised the battered roads where black
people live. For 18 months, beginning in 1998, he said he was T.J.
Dawson, a laborer whose girlfriend needed cocaine to get in the mood
for sex.

He was really an undercover cop for a drug task force based in
Amarillo. Coleman was allowed to work alone for The Panhandle Regional
Narcotics Trafficking Task Force. He kept no written records, save
incident reports filed with seized evidence, reports later determined
to be false. No photographs were taken. No video was shot. No one
observed his buys.

Every ensuing conviction relied on one thing: his word.

By the time he finished testifying, 38 people, 35 of them black, had
been convicted of selling small amounts of cocaine and sentenced to
prison for as long as 90 years. For this, he was named Texas'
outstanding narcotics officer in 2000.

Problem is, the star witness lied on the stand and several other
places. Another problem - Swisher County District Attorney Terry
McEachern, Sheriff Larry Stewart and District Judge Ed Self, who heard
most of the cases, knew the witness had a tarnished record in law
enforcement. That information was kept from jurors and from defense
attorneys.

The arrests accounted for about 10 percent of Tulia's black
residents.

The Tulia cases have languished for four years. Last Monday, 12 people
in state prison were released on their own recognizance pending a
ruling on their future from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which
could take as long as two years. Four others remain in custody.

Despite ongoing federal and state investigations, not one conviction
has been overturned, and no action has been taken against officials
from Swisher County or the task force.

'Blatant perjury'

The state appointed two special prosecutors earlier this year to hold
hearings to determine whether Coleman's testimony was indeed the sole
basis for conviction in four cases. And to find out whether the
prosecution team withheld information damaging to their star witness.
The answer to both questions: yes.

Retired Dallas District Judge Ron Chapman - appointed after Self
recused himself - stopped the hearings one day after Coleman took the
stand, saying Coleman was committing "blatant perjury."

A stipulation signed in May by the judge, the special prosecutors and
defense lawyers working pro bono for the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund in New York, said all 38 convictions should be
overturned, including 27 plea bargains signed to avoid lengthy prison
terms.

Coleman is "the most devious, nonresponsive witness this court has
witnessed in 25 years on the bench in Texas," the judge wrote. Coleman
also was a bigot who used the "n" word on the job, testimony showed.

Examples of Coleman's perjury, the document said, included testifying
that he'd never been arrested "except for a traffic ticket back when I
was a kid."

In truth, Coleman was arrested in August 1998, in the middle of the
Tulia investigation, on charges of theft and abusing authority while a
deputy with the Cochran County Sheriff's Office.

He'd walked off that job and skipped town owing more than $7,000 to
local stores that extended credit because he was a deputy, and stole
more than 100 gallons of gasoline from county pumps, documents and
testimony showed. Charges were dropped when Coleman made
restitution.

He'd also abandoned a previous deputy's post in Pecos County, just
before he was about to be fired for lying, documents said.

The 129-page finding also faulted local officials for:

=95 Allowing Sheriff Stewart to testify that he hadn't received any
negative information about Coleman "despite the fact that he himself
arrested Coleman" on the Cochran County warrant.

=95 Portraying Coleman in court as an exemplary officer with no criminal
record.

"It was a comedy of errors, it just wasn't one mistake," said Lubbock
criminal defense attorney Rod Hobson, one of the special prosecutors.
"It was the task force, McEachern, Coleman, everyone involved screwed
up, practically."

Targeting blacks

Tulia, population 5,000 and dropping, isn't much more than a wide spot
in the road between Amarillo and Lubbock.

Black residents, who number about 400, mostly work behind the scenes,
in the fields, the restaurant kitchens, and the nearby prison. Some
can't work or don't, and live on welfare in federally subsidized
housing - and it is from these ranks that Coleman culled most of his
cases.

Coleman first went after local troublemakers identified by the
sheriff, according to defense lawyers. The sheriff denied those
claims. Then Coleman went after their families and friends, until he
had 46 indictments.

On July 23, 1999, Coleman, flanked by other officers, rousted people
from their beds and paraded them across the courthouse lawn before a
tipped-off media gantlet. No drugs or paraphernalia or money or guns
were found during the arrests.

The now-defunct local paper, the Tulia Sentinel, ran a headline
declaring "Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage."

Pig farmer Joe Welton Moore was the first to go on trial. He was the
drug kingpin of Tulia, authorities said. He lived in a shack with a
dirt front yard. After a one-day trial, Moore - who has a previous
narcotics felony on his record - was sentenced to 90 years. He was
among those released last week.

All the busts were for powder cocaine, which is heavier and more
expensive than the rock variety. Texas law allows stiffer punishments
for heavier seizures. This point was not lost on defense attorneys who
later reviewed the lengthy jail terms meted out.

Drug laws also allow longer sentences when sales are made near schools
or parks. Conveniently, defense attorneys said, Coleman reported
nearly all his purchases near these locations.

Also, defense attorneys note, the cocaine evidence was of inferior
purity - in some cases as low as 2 percent. The average purity of
street sales is at least 60 percent, crime statistics show.

Defense attorneys speculate that Coleman smashed rock cocaine and
mixed it with a white substance to manufacture evidence. Hobson thinks
Coleman was sold a diluted product by some Tulia residents who saw an
opportunity to make money off the new guy in town.

One defendant died before trial. Seven cases were dropped. Some
defendants proved they were elsewhere when Coleman said he bought
drugs from them.

Three counts of aggravated perjury were filed in April over Coleman's
evidentiary hearing testimony. It's too late to charge him for his
trial testimony; the statute of limitations has run out.

Coleman is free on bail pending trial.