TEXAS AGENT INDICTED AFTER HEARING TO REVIEW '99 DRUG STING

A former undercover narcotics agent whose testimony led to drug
convictions of 38 people, nearly all of them black, in a small,
predominantly white Texas Panhandle town was indicted yesterday on
three felony perjury charges, a development further damaging the
credibility of his investigation.

The indictment of the former agent, Thomas Coleman, brought yet
another chapter to a racially charged case that divided the town,
Tulia, after almost a tenth of its African-American population was
arrested on the drug charges in 1999.

The indictment, returned by a Swisher County grand jury in Tulia,
accuses Mr. Coleman, who is 43 and white, of lying under oath at least
three times last month at a hearing that the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals ordered as a way of helping determine whether four black men
convicted in the case should be freed.

The perjury counts stem from what Mr. Coleman told that hearing about
gasoline theft with which he had been charged in Cochran County, where
he had been a sheriff's deputy before arriving in Tulia, about 80
miles away, in 1998.

But while none of the counts are directly related to his role in
organizing the Tulia drug arrests, and in then providing the
uncorroborated testimony on which the convictions depended, they will
almost certainly further erode the credibility of a largely
discredited investigation in which Mr. Coleman made a target of blacks
with evidence that rarely extended beyond scribbling suspects' names
on his leg.

Mr. Coleman, who has no listed telephone number, could not be reached
for comment yesterday, and it was not clear whether he yet had a
lawyer to defend him.

His indictment follows a surprise deal between prosecutors and defense
lawyers three weeks ago in which they moved to overturn all the
convictions that resulted from his investigation, including those in
which defendants pleaded guilty.

The deal, approved by Ron Chapman, a retired judge who presided over
the hearings last month, in turn followed bizarre and sometimes
seemingly self-damning testimony there by Mr. Coleman, who at one
point acknowledged that he had often used racial slurs.

Lawyers for Tulia residents arrested in the sweep are now gathering
information about it, preparing to submit a detailed explanation of
the circumstances behind each arrest to the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals. That court, the state's highest for criminal matters, will
then decide whether to vacate the convictions.

Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer in Amarillo who has represented several of
the defendants, said of Mr. Coleman's indictment: "Swisher County is
now busy trying to make it seem like they're fine, upstanding people
who respect the law. This still doesn't change the fact that there are
people in prison out there chopping cotton in the sun because of Tom
Coleman."

Thirteen of those arrested are still in prison, and only one of the 38
convictions has previously been thrown out. The 37 others will remain
unless the appeals court, known for a conservative voting history,
decides to overturn them.

Ponytailed, often clad in a black leather jacket, Mr. Coleman cut an
untraditional figure in the typically ho-hum world of Texas Panhandle
law enforcement. He was hired in January 1998 by the Panhandle
Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force, a federally financed
antidrug consortium of 26 Texas counties.

But first he had been a deputy in Cochran County, where a warrant
issued in the summer of 1998 charged him with having stolen
county-owned gasoline two years before. Mr. Coleman was arrested,
though the charge was ultimately dismissed after he made
restitution.

The indictment yesterday said that he had contradicted himself about
when he had learned he was facing that charge, and that he had also
lied in testimony about his arrest and about whether, as required, he
had told the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and
Education that he had been arrested. Conviction could bring a prison
term of up to 10 years and fines of as much as $30,000.

"This is about perjury, not about $70 worth of stolen gasoline or
racism," Roderique S. Hobson Jr. of Lubbock, the special prosecutor
who obtained the indictment, said in an interview. "This basically
undermines the confidence of the convictions in this sweep."

Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund Inc., which represented several defendants in the Tulia sweep,
said, "We're pleased with the indictment, but not surprised."