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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom