Pubdate: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX) Copyright: 2003 Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas Contact: http://www.star-telegram.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/162 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom