JUDGE FREES 12 AFTER TULIA TRAVESTY

TULIA, Texas - For the first time in four years, Kizzie White's two small
children got to hug and cling to her Monday, without anyone interrupting to
say time's up.

For the first time in four years, Joe Moore had precisely what he wanted,
in the order he wanted it: barbecued ribs and a long, soapy hot bath.

And for the first time in four years, Freddie Brookins Jr. started planning
his future again, one he hopes will include the college scholarship that
slipped from his grasp in 1999.

The three were among 12 people - 11 of them black - who walked free on bail
Monday in this tiny Texas panhandle town after four years in prison on drug
convictions that a Texas judge and prosecutors now agree were a travesty of
justice based on the uncorroborated testimony of a racist white police
officer. Two weeks ago, Texas's governor signed a bill allowing them to be
released pending an appeals court's review, cutting short sentences ranging
from 20 to 90 years.

"It feels so good," said White, 26, who beamed as her 9-year-old daughter,
Roneisha, and 6-year-old son, Cashawn, nuzzled her, staying close as
magnets to the mother they had seen briefly just eight times in four years.
"I'm going to be the best mother I can to them."

A few feet away stood Moore, a 60-year-old hog farmer and gigantic man
surrounded by television cameras and supported by his lawyer. Illiterate,
diabetic, and barely able to walk without his lawyer's aid, Moore, who was
serving a 90-year sentence, clutched a grocery bag full of shampoo,
conditioner, and soap, and declared, "Everything's all right now."

The case began before dawn July 23, 1999, when masked police officers began
rounding up 46 people in Tulia, all but six of them black. In a town of
fewer than 5,000 people, the arrests represented nearly 10 percent of the
black population.

In eight lightning-quick trials, juries with virtually no black members
handed down blisteringly tough sentences - even though the sweeps turned up
no drugs, weapons, paraphernalia, or other signs of drug dealing.