Pubdate: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX) Copyright: 2003 Austin American-Statesman Contact: http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/32 Author: Alberta Phillips Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?118 (Perjury) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues) FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE OVERSEAS WHILE IGNORING INJUSTICE AT HOME Someone needs to liberate the Texas justice system. In Tulia and in Houston, we are witnessing police and prosecutorial tactics worthy of Iran or North Korea. President Bush has rightly targeted those countries for their oppressive regimes and for their human rights violations. Yet in his home state, Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott continue to turn a blind eye to a regime of law enforcement officials who have lied, slanted evidence and suppressed vital facts to win convictions. Despite mounting evidence that Houston Police Department crime lab technicians perjured themselves or acted with gross incompetence to help prosecutors secure guilty verdicts, Perry continues to say Texas' justice system is just fine. In Tulia, a special judge is hearing evidence detailing how African American residents were intimidated, humiliated and railroaded by local law enforcement officials into drug trafficking charges. You'd think that Abbott, who presented himself during the 2002 campaign as the people's chief lawyer and enforcer of the Constitution, would have something to say about Tulia and Houston. But Abbott has chosen to look the other way. Indeed, it took a national civil rights organization - the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund - and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert to unearth the truth in Tulia. Neither Abbott nor Perry have supported a temporary halt of executions of people who were convicted by shoddy DNA evidence from the Houston lab. Already, one person wrongly convicted of raping a woman has been freed. Josiah Sutton was lucky. A retest of DNA evidence by a private lab proved Sutton was innocent. But others won't be so lucky, given the extent of the problems in the Houston lab. In some cases, lab employees used the entire DNA sample, leaving none for defense lawyers seeking to clear their clients. For years a roof leaked like a sieve, contaminating DNA evidence. Samples were mixed up. Even so, crime lab employees vouched for evidence and testified under oath as to their conclusions. At least 17 people were sent to death row and another 43 were imprisoned based on DNA from the lab. In Tulia, dozens of blacks were arrested, and many were sentenced to 20 years to 90 years in prison based on the uncorroborated testimony of Tom Coleman, who in 1999 worked as an undercover police officer in Swisher County. This month, Coleman's untraditional tactics went under scrutiny at new hearings aimed at determining whether blacks were convicted solely on the word of Coleman and if Swisher County prosecutors hid key facts about Coleman's spotty law enforcement background. Coleman's ex-wife said in a sworn statement that he carried a Ku Klux Klan membership card in his wallet. Coleman denied that. Under questioning, Coleman first defended his work, but later admitted there were discrepancies in some cases, including one that was tossed out because the black woman proved she was in Oklahoma at the time Coleman said he bought drugs from her. "There are some mess-ups in four cases," Coleman testified. He admitted under oath that he routinely referred to black people as "niggers," and had no video or audiotape or witnesses to corroborate his drug buys. "But for your word, there is really no evidence that any of these alleged buys took place?" one lawyer asked Coleman. "Yes," Coleman replied. When asked if everyone he locked up deserved to be in prison, Coleman responded: "I'm pretty sure." Those admissions are shocking coming from a sworn officer of the law. But Coleman never could have gotten away with his persecution of blacks in Tulia without cooperation from prosecutors, the sheriff or white jurors who acted on Coleman's bizarre tales. Last week, we saw an outraged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounce Iraqis for violating Geneva Conventions rules against humiliating prisoners of war by interrogating captured American troops on television. No such protections were afforded Tulia residents when Bush was governor. In 1999, police roused 10 percent of Tulia's black residents from their beds, refusing some permission to dress before parading them in front of television cameras. One man was clad in his underpants. So it is disheartening to see due process trampled in Tulia and Houston, to watch our defenders of justice manipulate outcomes. Isn't that similar to the way things are done in Iran and North Korea? In denying these truths about Texas justice, Perry and Abbott are like the citizens of fictitious Oz who wore green glasses so that all in the Emerald City would appear as green and rich as its name. Removing those spectacles meant seeing the city's true colors. Justice demands that Perry and Abbott not only seek truth, but confront it. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl