A SMALL, BUT WELCOME, STEP TOWARD JUSTICE

Justice came calling Monday at the Swisher County Courthouse, and this
time, the door opened.

After an hour-long hearing Monday before visiting District Judge Ron
Chapman of Dallas, bail was granted for 12 Tulia defendants, and Chapman
declared the hearing adjourned. Then 11 men and one woman who had spent
more than four years in Texas prisons for crimes they didn't commit stepped
from the courthouse into freedom.

Cheers rang out. Family members swarmed over them. Tears of joy flowed. One
defendant, Kizzie White, embraced her two children, Roneisha, 9, and
Cashawn, 6.

"This is a blessed day," she said, fighting back tears. "I'm so grateful,
so happy to be home with my family."

Daniel Olivarez, another defendant, will remain in prison for about two
weeks until jurisdictional questions are resolved in his case. After that,
he, too, should be freed on bail, his lawyers said.

Monday's release of the defendants, while welcome, is only a step in a long
journey toward justice for them. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals should
move expeditiously to throw out convictions of the 12 released Monday and
26 others ensnared in the bogus drug sting that mostly targeted Tulia's
African American community. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also
should do its part by pardoning defendants or granting clemency or
commutation in the cases. Only then can we say that justice, though
delayed, has arrived.

In 1999 and 2000, this brown-brick box courthouse was the setting for a
miscarriage of justice that took the name of the Swisher County seat:
Tulia. Here, they were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 20 years to
90 years on trumped-up drug felony charges by a rogue law officer who was
fond of calling blacks "niggers."

From the start, the Tulia case seemed bizarre and racially motivated. The
cases were based on the word of one undercover lawman, Tom Coleman, who had
been chased off several other police forces before coming to Tulia, working
for a regional drug task force that operated out of Swisher County. During
his 18-month sting, Coleman fingered 46 people, most of them African
Americans who make up about 10 percent of Tulia's black population. Of
those, 38 were convicted of drug trafficking despite the lack of
corroborating evidence or witnesses to support Coleman's accusations.

Now it is Coleman who is facing perjury charges and hard time - an irony
not lost on White's father.

"(Coleman) is the real crook," Rickey White said. "He didn't care about the
moms, the dads and the kids he hurt. This should be a wake-up call that
innocent people are being hurt in this system."

He is absolutely correct. Texas should heed that warning from a suffering
father who has waited too long for his daughter and son, Kareem White, to
be freed.

It is fitting that Tulia defendants were freed from prison in the same week
that Texas celebrates Juneteenth, the arrival in 1865 of the news that
slaves had been freed. That notice was two years late in coming to Texas,
just as Tulia defendants spent years awaiting their deliverance.

Tulia is a stark reminder that the racism that spawned and perpetuated the
enslavement of people based on their skin color continues to skew justice.
We should remember the 12 people who walked from the courthouse to
relatives waiting outside in the sunshine. These folks are living symbols
that innocent people are sent to prison, maybe even to the death chamber.
They are reminders that Texas justice is not colorblind, but rather blinded
by color.

We shouldn't forget this day.