CRIMINAL INJUSTICE

The trial record emerging from a review of the 1999 Tulia drug cases shows
such a dysfunctional criminal justice system that the word justice should
be excised from the phrase.

Tom Coleman, a virtually unsupervised undercover officer with a
questionable history in law enforcement, became a one-man street-sweeping
machine, presenting drug cases based on no evidence other than his own word
and a recollection of surveillance notes scribbled on his leg.

The Swisher County Sheriff's Department didn't check Coleman's background
with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement before putting him on the
payroll. Had the sheriff made the call, he would have known about the 1996
complaint from Coleman's former employer, the sheriff in Cochran County,
who said Coleman should not be in law enforcement.

The same sheriff invited media photographers to engage in what became a
humiliation of the accused, snapping photographs and taking video of
disheveled, bewildered and poorly clad suspects rousted from their homes on
the morning of July 23, 1999 -- all on the word of one "investigator."

The local media, judging from the headlines on the stories and editorials
in the now-defunct Tulia Sentinel, apparently were co-opted into believing
that this small farming community was being threatened by a lucrative
powder cocaine drug trade conducted by the town's black residents. The fact
that none of the accused ever exhibited a lifestyle remotely approaching
one that drug proceeds would afford made no difference.

The district attorney agreed to prosecute on evidence so tissue-thin that
it's generous to describe it as flimsy. No drugs, money or weapons were
found in the raids.

Defense attorneys were primarily interested in getting their clients to
plead out -- and 17 pleaded guilty after they saw the first jury trial
result in a 60-year sentence.

The all-white juries couldn't -- or wouldn't -- navigate their way to the
truth, given the tidal wave of prevarication that poured forth from the
only witness for the prosecution: Tom Coleman.

H.M. Baggarly Jr. must be spinning in his grave.

The legendary editor and publisher of Swisher County's Tulia Herald for
nearly 30 years never would have let these disturbing abuses go
unchallenged. Too bad he died in 1995, four years before the drug stings
landed nearly 10 percent of the town's African-American residents in jail.
(The few whites who were charged had close relations with the town's black
community.)

Of the 46 people originally arrested, just four had their cases dropped. A
fifth died before trial. The rest got sentences ranging from probation to
hard time. More than four years after the original bust, 16 people remain
behind bars.

But in a sign that the spotlight of public scrutiny has worked, Swisher
County prosecutors last week began the process of overturning the 38
convictions. Finally, they conceded that they should not have relied on the
uncorroborated testimony of a single undercover officer.

Retired state District Judge Ron Chapman, appointed by the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals to conduct a hearing on the convictions, said he would
recommend that the appeals court grant new trials to every person
convicted, including those who pleaded guilty.

A special prosecutor is considering grand jury action against Coleman,
whose performance on the witness stand in last week's hearing bordered on
farcical.

Little comfort is found in trying to convince oneself that the abuse of
power and the undercurrent of racism that rocked the small town of Tulia
was an aberration -- not when Texas history includes the chapters about
Lonnie Hood and the South Central Texas Narcotics Task Force.

Undercover investigator William Lonnie Hood, with no formal training in
narcotics investigations and no peace officer certification from the state,
worked alone from October 1988 through March 1989 in the town of Sonora, on
the outskirts of the Hill Country. His efforts brought 28 indictments
against 14 drug-dealing suspects.

After several cases had gone to trial, Hood was found to have planted
evidence and falsified reports during an unrelated operation in Taylor County.

Most of the Sonora defendants had been in jail since the day they were
arrested. Several already had been sent to prison. All were eventually
released. In the aftermath, both Sutton County and the district attorney's
office were sued.

In November 2000, a nine-month investigation operated by the South Central
Texas Narcotics Task Force resulted in the indictments of 38
African-Americans in the small town of Hearne. The cases rest on testimony
from a black man who had a previous conviction of selling cocaine.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas contends that the
suspect-turned-informant was offered probation on a burglary charge in
exchange for testimony against 20 blacks. Robertson County District
Attorney John Paschall said no such deal existed.

The first of these cases to go to trial resulted in a hung jury.

Narcotics task forces like those in Tulia and Hearne are federally funded,
with the grant money channeled through the Office of the Governor-Criminal
Justice Division Law Enforcement Program, formerly called the Texas
Narcotics Control Program. The Texas Department of Public Safety has no
role in disbursement of the funds.

Because the task forces are made up of officers from multiple law
enforcement jurisdictions, there is very little accountability to any one
governing body, although the criminal justice division is supposed to
monitor their efforts. It does not require that task forces document the
racial breakdown of the people arrested.

The overzealousness of some drug enforcement efforts was ignited, in part,
by Congress' desire to "do something" about the proliferation of cocaine
use in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Successful enforcement efforts,
measured in terms of numbers of arrests, meant the continued existence of
the task force.

Besides the money, federal lawmakers also passed sentencing guidelines that
include a wide disparity between those convicted of trafficking in crack
cocaine and those caught with powder cocaine.

The voyeuristic element of media ride-alongs at the invitation of local law
enforcement officers adds another level of distaste to this story. These
made-for-TV events aren't about justice -- they're about good pictures.
They are intended to show the folks at home how valuable these task forces
are as just another means of justifying their existence.

Running up the score on the arrest tote board, coupled with an unmistakable
element of prejudice, obscured the constitutional guarantee of due process
in Sonora and Tulia, and possibly Hearne.

Restoring confidence in the criminal justice system will take more than a
perjury trial for Tom Coleman.