NARCOTICS AGENT ADMITS 'MESS-UPS' IN TEXAN CASE

An undercover narcotics agent whose questionable testimony led to the
arrests of half the black men in a small town in Texas four years ago was
being cross-examined for a second day yesterday, in a court hearing that
defence lawyers hope will lead to the exoneration of 22 people still in
prison on drug charges.

The 1999 drug sting in the town of Tulia has become a byword for everything
that is wrong with the United States' war on drugs in rural areas.

It is a rallying point for race advocacy groups, which argue that the only
reason the courts believed the uncorroborated, largely undocumented
testimony of Tom Coleman was because the establishment in Tulia is white
and the defendants all lived in a black neighborhood, openly referred to as
"Niggertown".

In the new hearing, Mr Coleman has been questioned by a top Washington
lawyer, Mitchell Zamoff, and admitted countless holes and inconsistencies
in his working methods. "You're not sure everybody in jail belongs there,
are you?" Mr Zamoff asked on Thursday. "I'm pretty sure," Mr Coleman said,
shifting in his seat.

Later, Mr Coleman admitted there were "some mess-ups" in four of the 22
cases, although he refused to admit any mistakes in the case of Tonya
White, who was let out of prison last year after she managed to prove
through bank records that she was in Oklahoma, where she lived, at the time
that Mr Coleman said he was buying powder cocaine from her in Tulia.

Ms White has said that she never met Coleman until her first pretrial and
that she does not know how or why he obtained her name.

Mr Coleman, a former prison employee with a history of petty crime, claims
to have organised about 100 drug transactions in his sting operation. He
kept few formal records, sometimes identified people by going to the police
and asking for likely names, and on at least one occasion scrawled the
pertinent information with a biro on his leg.

Mr Zamoff asked him: "The only evidence that any of the buys you said were
made in Swisher County happened is your word, correct?" He replied: "Yes."

Mr Coleman's testimony provoked titters from the largely black crowd in the
courtroom, as he repeatedly came out with phrases such as: "I'm not even
sure I'm telling you accurate" and "Don't hold this to a T". He also
admitted that the times on his worksheets did not correspond to reality.

One person attending the hearings was Mattie White, who had four children
imprisoned on Mr Coleman's word. One of them, Tonya, is now free, while the
others are serving sentences of 14, 25 and 60 years. Asked for her reaction
to the hearings by a New York Times reporter, she said: "The truth is
finally coming out."