JUSTICE AND DECENCY RESIDE IN CITIZENS' HEARTS

Last week, visiting judge Ron Chapman finished the evidentiary hearings in
the 1999 Tulia drug bust by recommending that the Texas State Court of
Criminal Appeals grant new trials to the 38 defendants who either were
convicted or accepted plea agreements. This is a stinging rebuke for
Tulia's citizens, who let this sorry drama unfold without challenge; for
Sheriff Larry Stewart, who hired the state's lone witness; and for District
Attorney Terry McEachern, who prosecuted these cases on such scanty and
questionable evidence.

But the lessons to be learned extend well beyond any of these individuals.

The most important lessons here are for all of us.

In the 1960s remake of "Mutiny on the Bounty," Captain Bligh survives the
mutiny and ultimately appears before an admiralty hearing. He is absolved
of wrongdoing in the mutiny, but he is admonished for his excessive zeal in
implementing the Articles of War - to wit, the flogging of his crew for the
least infraction.

The presiding officer has this to say to Captain Bligh:

"No code can cover all contingencies. We cannot put justice aboard our
ships in books. Justice and decency are carried in the heart of the captain
- - or they be not aboard."

The excess of zeal so common in our nation in the prosecution of drug
offenders has led us to an injustice here.

People who might have been guilty of violating these laws were swept up
with others who were either not guilty or whose guilt was questionable, and
all were subjected to treatment none of us should condone - conviction or
coerced plea bargains on the unsupported word of a single individual who,
in the final analysis, did not deserve to be believed.

Such treatment ought not be possible in any American court even if the
individual giving evidence is a man of untarnished honesty and the
defendant a psychopathic serial killer.

And rather than point at any single individual in the chain, I say it is
the absolute obligation of every individual in the chain to prevent such a
railroading of justice.

Police, prosecutors, judges, juries, even news media are, at least in the
moral sense, individually and collectively responsible for the quality of
justice we administer.

When it comes to certain crimes, we Americans seem to abdicate reason in
favor of passion, and drug-related crimes are at the top of the list.

This is an error of society. We must all insist on objective standards of
harm to the common good if we are to maintain the substance that backs up
our self-image as a just society. That is why a man who has a beer in the
privacy of his own home should be treated differently under the law than a
man who drinks two six-packs before plowing his truck into 50 children in a
school zone.

We must insist on this distinction because all of us are susceptible to its
abuse.

A relevant analogy would be guns. I own a handgun - a Smith and Wesson .357
Magnum. I don't kill people with it. I don't even threaten people with it.
I use it to shoot paper targets at a shooting range.

I should be treated differently under the law than someone who uses an
identical gun to rob, rape and kill.

If I am suspected of being the man who used such a gun for murder, it
should not be possible for the state to convict me on the unsupported
accusation of someone who may have a hidden interest in causing me trouble.

When a person can be jailed for 20 years or more on one man's say-so, the
accuser must be utterly free of hidden agendas, vendettas, excessive zeal
and honest mistakes - a truly superhuman expectation. If an accuser is
sullied by any of these common conditions, any one of us can find ourselves
behind bars for crimes we did not commit, victims of a system designed only
to convict and not to exonerate, with little direct connection between the
behavior and the penalty.

And when the abuse is ultimately ferreted out, as it was in Tulia, every
one of us forfeits something valuable.

As I see it, the lesson here is for all Americans who serve as law
officers, all Americans who serve in the courts, all Americans who serve on
juries, all Americans who read about and ponder the significance of state
power that exceeds its own boundaries - in short, a lesson for all Americans.

Justice and decency reside in the hearts of all law-abiding citizens.

Or these qualities do not reside here at all.