FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE OVERSEAS WHILE IGNORING INJUSTICE AT HOME

Someone Needs to Liberate the Texas Justice System.

In Tulia and in Houston, we are witnessing police and prosecutorial
tactics worthy of Iran or North Korea. President Bush has rightly
targeted those countries for their oppressive regimes and for their
human rights violations. Yet in his home state, Gov. Rick Perry and
Attorney General Greg Abbott continue to turn a blind eye to a regime
of law enforcement officials who have lied, slanted evidence and
suppressed vital facts to win convictions.

Despite mounting evidence that Houston Police Department crime lab
technicians perjured themselves or acted with gross incompetence to
help prosecutors secure guilty verdicts, Perry continues to say Texas'
justice system is just fine. In Tulia, a special judge is hearing
evidence detailing how African American residents were intimidated,
humiliated and railroaded by local law enforcement officials into drug
trafficking charges. You'd think that Abbott, who presented himself
during the 2002 campaign as the people's chief lawyer and enforcer of
the Constitution, would have something to say about Tulia and Houston.
But Abbott has chosen to look the other way.

Indeed, it took a national civil rights organization - the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund - and New York Times columnist Bob
Herbert to unearth the truth in Tulia.

Neither Abbott nor Perry have supported a temporary halt of executions
of people who were convicted by shoddy DNA evidence from the Houston
lab. Already, one person wrongly convicted of raping a woman has been
freed. Josiah Sutton was lucky. A retest of DNA evidence by a private
lab proved Sutton was innocent. But others won't be so lucky, given
the extent of the problems in the Houston lab.

In some cases, lab employees used the entire DNA sample, leaving none
for defense lawyers seeking to clear their clients. For years a roof
leaked like a sieve, contaminating DNA evidence. Samples were mixed
up. Even so, crime lab employees vouched for evidence and testified
under oath as to their conclusions. At least 17 people were sent to
death row and another 43 were imprisoned based on DNA from the lab.

In Tulia, dozens of blacks were arrested, and many were sentenced to
20 years to 90 years in prison based on the uncorroborated testimony
of Tom Coleman, who in 1999 worked as an undercover police officer in
Swisher County.

This month, Coleman's untraditional tactics went under scrutiny at new
hearings aimed at determining whether blacks were convicted solely on
the word of Coleman and if Swisher County prosecutors hid key facts
about Coleman's spotty law enforcement background. Coleman's ex-wife
said in a sworn statement that he carried a Ku Klux Klan membership
card in his wallet. Coleman denied that.

Under questioning, Coleman first defended his work, but later admitted
there were discrepancies in some cases, including one that was tossed
out because the black woman proved she was in Oklahoma at the time
Coleman said he bought drugs from her.

"There are some mess-ups in four cases," Coleman testified.

He admitted under oath that he routinely referred to black people as
"niggers," and had no video or audiotape or witnesses to corroborate
his drug buys.

"But for your word, there is really no evidence that any of these
alleged buys took place?" one lawyer asked Coleman.

"Yes," Coleman replied.

When asked if everyone he locked up deserved to be in prison, Coleman
responded: "I'm pretty sure."

Those admissions are shocking coming from a sworn officer of the law.
But Coleman never could have gotten away with his persecution of
blacks in Tulia without cooperation from prosecutors, the sheriff or
white jurors who acted on Coleman's bizarre tales.

Last week, we saw an outraged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
denounce Iraqis for violating Geneva Conventions rules against
humiliating prisoners of war by interrogating captured American troops
on television.

No such protections were afforded Tulia residents when Bush was
governor. In 1999, police roused 10 percent of Tulia's black residents
from their beds, refusing some permission to dress before parading
them in front of television cameras. One man was clad in his underpants.

So it is disheartening to see due process trampled in Tulia and
Houston, to watch our defenders of justice manipulate outcomes. Isn't
that similar to the way things are done in Iran and North Korea?

In denying these truths about Texas justice, Perry and Abbott are like
the citizens of fictitious Oz who wore green glasses so that all in
the Emerald City would appear as green and rich as its name. Removing
those spectacles meant seeing the city's true colors. Justice demands
that Perry and Abbott not only seek truth, but confront it.