WRITER, NAACP OWED CREDIT FOR RIGHTING TEXAS INJUSTICE

Well, how's this for sheer irony? On Monday, the Pulitzer prizes for
journalism were handed out. Bob Herbert of The New York Times did not -
repeat, did not - win for commentary.

Just six days earlier, on April 1, a Texas special prosecutor tossed out 38
convictions related to the "putrid mess" (thank the late, great Alaska Sen.
Ernest Gruening for that pithy line) in the tiny Texas town of Tulia. Get
the connection? If you don't, not to worry.

Herbert wrote a series of scathing, brilliant columns during the summer of
last year about a nasty situation in Tulia. Herbert excoriated the
treatment given to about 40 Tulia residents, most of them black, after a
so-called undercover narcotics cop had them busted on drug charges.

A brief rehash of this lulu of a story is in order. It's a saga that
involves our old and oft-proven unreliable friend: uncorroborated testimony
from a single eyewitness. It involves a police officer who sounds a lot
like the character of Vic Mackey of the FX cable network show The Shield.
Except this guy wasn't nearly as smart as the unorthodox, street-hardened
TV police officer. Or as ethical.

Tom Coleman went into deep-cover mode in 1998, trolling around Tulia
claiming he bought drugs from this person and that one. In July 1999,
police arrested 47 Tulia residents - three white, three Hispanic, the rest
black - on Coleman's allegations.

How did Coleman document his "undercover" work? With audio or video tapes?
Written records? Corroborating witnesses? Nah. That sounded too much like
real police work. Apparently figuring epidermis was a more reliable medium
for holding data than either tapes or paper, Coleman simply rolled up a
pants leg and scribbled details on his bare skin. This was the modus
operandi of a guy that a sheriff in another county, where Coleman had
worked in law enforcement, described as someone who shouldn't have been in
the profession.

Coleman - whom others had previously described as an unstable liar and a
thief - was the sole prosecution witness. Although one defendant was
acquitted after she proved she was in Oklahoma City at the time Coleman
said he bought drugs from her, jurors figured his testimony was good enough
to convict seven of those who chose trials by jury. Most of the rest
pleaded guilty, and 14 received prison sentences. Thirteen are still in prison.

They won't be for long. Moved more, we can suspect, by a sense of
embarrassment than justice, the state special prosecutor has eighty-sixed
the convictions in the Tulia matter. Credit for that should go to a number
of people, Herbert foremost among them. Pulitzer judges should admit their
oversight, declare that Herbert at least tied with Colbert King of The
Washington Post for the commentary prize and divvy up whatever dough is
associated with winning.

Kudos should also go to the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, much maligned by my fellow conservatives as nothing more
these days than a wing of the Democratic Party.

OK, so the NAACP is a wing of the Democratic Party. But it is much more
than that. And the NAACP is, primarily - in its 94th year of existence -
still the first place many black folks go if they feel a racial injustice
has been done.

After the Tulia debacle, relatives of some of those caught in Coleman's web
headed up the road to the NAACP branch in Amarillo, Texas. The state's
NAACP folks agitated, cajoled and exhorted government officials about the
case. The national chapter became involved, and the word got out: An
injustice had been committed in Tulia.

Some might call it a racist injustice, although the "r" word has been
flagrantly abused these days. But here's what doesn't pass the smell test:
In the seven cases where defendants were convicted after a trial, blacks
served on none of the juries.

Small wonder, then, that NAACP President Kweisi Mfume called the Tulia case
"a tale of the dark days of the South all of us grew up under."

It is a tale that reminds us that the racism affirmative action proponents
claim hasn't died is indeed still among us. Odd, though, that the "plight"
of blacks trying to get into the University of Michigan - many of whom are
better situated in life than Tulia's poor blacks - aroused more passion
among African- American leadership than any of the 38 people convicted.

NAACP leadership is excluded from that criticism, however, as is Herbert.
Both the organization and the man deserve credit for a job well done.

This story isn't quite over. Law enforcement honchos voted Tom "Epidermis"
Coleman Texas's 1999 Lawman of the Year.

They haven't taken back the award yet.