TEXAS TO PROBE DRUG SWEEP CRITICIZED AS RACIALLY BIASED

In 1999, Many Blacks In Town Were Arrested On One Man's Testimony

HOUSTON -- Attorney General John Cornyn of Texas has opened an
investigation into a 1999 drug sweep in which about 12 percent of the black
population of Tulia, Texas, was arrested. The decision failed to appease
civil rights lawyers, who describe the arrests in an undercover operation
as atrocities and want the convictions overturned.

Cornyn, who announced the investigation Monday, suggested that he had
opened the inquiry partly because of confusion that had arisen this month
about whether the U.S. Justice Department was continuing its own civil
rights investigation of more than two years.

The confusion arose after a Justice Department official, in a letter to the
American Bar Association, described the investigation as closed. Justice
Department officials now say the letter was "in error" and that the
investigation is continuing.

In July 1999, 46 people, all but three of them black, were arrested on drug
charges in Tulia, a town of about 5,000 people. In nearly every case, the
only evidence against the defendants was the testimony of a sole undercover
agent, Tom Coleman.

Civil rights groups have focused their criticism on Coleman, who was
working for the Swisher County Sheriff's Office when he engineered the
arrests in Tulia after what he said was an 18-month undercover
investigation of drug trafficking.

Coleman worked alone, wore no wire, collected no video evidence, kept scant
written records and produced little corroborating evidence at trials. He
had little experience in undercover work. The convictions in the Tulia
cases were based largely on his testimony.

After the arrests, Cornyn named Coleman the state's "lawman of the year"
for 1999.

Jeff Blackburn, an Amarillo, Texas, lawyer representing more than 20
defendants in the cases, said 13 people remained in jail on sentences as
long as 320 years. Blackburn said lawyers were filing motions seeking new
trials in every case.

The announcement from Cornyn comes as he is running for a vacant seat in
the U.S. Senate against Mayor Ron Kirk of Dallas, who is trying to become
the state's first black senator. The Tulia cases have not become a major
issue in the Senate race, but groups including the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and
the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized the drug arrests as
racially biased.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.