OFFICER SHOWS UNCERTAINTY IN DISPUTED DRUG CASES

TULIA, Tex., March 20 - Visitors to this small, poor community in the Texas
panhandle, about halfway between Amarillo and Lubbock, see a sign as they
enter town. "The richest land and the finest people," it says.

The first proposition is plainly false. The second has been tested this
week, as witness after witness has testified to shortcomings in the
character and methods of Thomas Coleman, a white former undercover police
officer here whose uncorroborated testimony supported drug charges against
46 people, almost all of them black. They represented more than 10 percent
of the small African-American population of this town of 5,000.

Mr. Coleman took the stand to defend himself today, in a hearing to collect
evidence for a challenge filed by four men serving terms of 20 to 90 years
who are seeking to overturn their convictions.

Mr. Coleman admitted that "there were some mess-ups" in four other cases
involving misidentifications and false reports that resulted in dismissals.
And he expressed less than certainty that the 22 people who remain in
prison based on his testimony are all guilty.

Mitchell E. Zamoff, a lawyer with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, which is
representing Christopher Jackson, one of the inmates, challenged Mr.
Coleman with tenacious, staccato questions.

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

"Yes," Mr. Coleman said.

Mr. Coleman testified that although most of the transactions were in public
places, he did not wear a recording device, arrange for video surveillance,
ask anyone to accompany him, ask anyone to observe the deals or fingerprint
the plastic bags containing the drugs.

"You're not sure if everyone you locked up deserves to be in jail?" Mr.
Zamoff asked.

"I'm pretty sure," Mr. Coleman said.

Mr. Coleman, dressed in a black leather jacket, was a talkative and
animated witness. He gesticulated and gave long, seemingly
stream-of-consciousness responses.

About 100 people, perhaps two-thirds of them black, came to see him
testify. They murmured and chuckled at the testimony, giving the courtroom
the feel of a low-decibel revival meeting.

One prosecutor, Mark Hocker, asked Judge Ron Chapman to admonish the audience.

"This is a courtroom and not a church," Mr. Hocker said, "and we don't need
amens shouted out."

The judge complied.

Much of the audience's amusement was directed at Mr. Coleman's uncertainty
in testifying today, in contrast to his confidence during the original
trials in late 1999 and 2000.

In response to questions about his having quit a job as a jailer in 1995 to
avoid being served with a restraining notice from his former wife, he
qualified his answers.

"I'm not even sure I'm telling you accurate," he said.

About another answer, he said, "Don't hold this to a T."

Sometimes he appeared evasive.

"Is there anything you weren't honest about?" Mr. Zamoff asked, referring
to a job application.

"I don't know," Mr. Coleman responded. "Do you have the application?"

Mr. Coleman conceded that he had left a trail of bad debts after he
resigned without notice from two earlier law enforcement positions, that he
once owned an illegal machine gun with an obliterated serial number and
that he has been subject to a court order to pay delinquent child support.

The four men challenging their convictions, all black, were arrested in a
sweep in July 1999 and tried about six months later. They have exhausted
their direct appeals but are asking the Texas courts to free them
nonetheless, on the theory that their prosecutions were racially biased and
that prosecutors did not turn over important information about Mr. Coleman
to their lawyers.

The men, Jason Williams, Freddie Brookins Jr., Joseph Moore and Mr.
Jackson, watched intently from the jury box. They have worn leg shackles
throughout the proceedings.

At the end of the hearings, which are expected to continue at least another
day, Judge Chapman will make a recommendation to an appeals court as to
whether the four should would receive new trials.

Mr. Coleman was at a loss today to explain discrepancies between time
sheets he filled out and certified as true and the dates of some of the
drug transactions. "That shouldn't be possible, should it?" Mr. Zamoff asked.

"Nope," Mr. Coleman said.

In testimony this morning, Sheriff Larry Stewart, who hired Mr. Coleman in
January 1998, said he had made only limited inquiries about Mr. Coleman's
background before doing so. He said he asked even fewer questions that
summer, when he arrested Mr. Coleman on theft and abuse of office charges
filed by another sheriff for whom Mr. Coleman had worked. Mr. Coleman was
accused of stealing gasoline from the county for his personal use.

Today, Mr. Coleman called those charges "bogus." But he ultimately paid for
the gas and repaid about $7,000 in debts to merchants in exchange for
dismissal of the criminal charges. Lawyers for the inmates argued that the
repayments amounted to an acknowledgment of guilt that warranted firing Mr.
Coleman long before Tulia's black population was literally decimated by the
arrests. They also maintained that defense lawyers should have been told
about the charges. Sheriff Stewart testified that he had asked state
authorities to seal Mr. Coleman's personnel file to protect his safety in
the undercover operation.

Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Inc., which represents two of the inmates, said the hearings had helped
explain Mr. Coleman's motives.

"The Tulia drug stings transformed Tom Coleman from a zero to a hero," Ms.
Gupta said. "He came into this and he couldn't get a law enforcement job
and he left this as Lawman of the Year." The reference was to an award Mr.
Coleman received from the state in 1999, not long after the arrests. "He
had to make drug cases however he could," she said.

John Nation, a special prosecutor brought in to handle the four cases,
acknowledged that Mr. Coleman "had a lot of baggage and he is certainly
controversial." But, Mr. Nation said, Mr. Coleman "was a good and competent
narcotics officer during the time he worked in Swisher County." Tulia is
the county seat.

Mattie White leaned forward and listened hard as Mr. Coleman testified.
Four of her children were arrested on Mr. Coleman's word. One of the cases,
against Tonya White, unraveled when she was able to prove, through bank
records, that she was in Oklahoma when Mr. Coleman said he bought cocaine
from her. Her three other children were sentenced to 14, 25 and 60 years.

Asked what the hearings meant to her, she said, "The truth is coming out."

Michelle Williams, a 34-year-old mother of four, was released from prison
in November, after serving three years of an eight-year sentence for
selling cocaine to Mr. Coleman, whom she said she had never met before her
arrest. She said the hearing here had stirred up emotions she has tried to
overcome.

"I hated the guy," she said. "In prison, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed
and it went away. But now the anger is coming back."

Ms. Williams, who works in a tortilla factory, was asked what the hearings
might accomplish.

"That everybody can come home and put their lives back together," she
answered. "We never had any problem in Tulia until this crook came in."