Pubdate: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 Source: Macon Telegraph (GA) Copyright: 2003 The Macon Telegraph Publishing Company Contact: http://www.macontelegraph.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/667 Author: Charles E. Richardson Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas) THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE Tulia, Texas is a pretty nondescript town of 5,000 just down state Highway 87 from Amarillo in northwest Texas. It's the kind of place people are from but has little to attract people to it. In this setting the wheels of justice turned, but in the wrong direction. In an 18-month sting operation, 46 people, 39 of them black, were arrested in July 1999 and accused of possessing cocaine by undercover agent Tom Coleman without any further corroboration. There was no audio, video, paraphernalia, money or other witnesses. From those arrests, 38 defendants were convicted or accepted plea bargains solely on Deputy Coleman's word. Seven other cases were dismissed and one person died before trial. The first man convicted was a 60-year-old black hog farmer named Joe Moore. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison. Many other defendants, seeing Moore's sentence, pleaded guilty instead of going to trial. But Deputy Coleman, who received the "Lawman of the Year" award for his work in Tulia, was more than he claimed to be. According to Wade Goodwyn's report on National Public Radio, one of the early defense attorneys happened to ask Coleman if he had ever been arrested. The deputy tried to dodge the question. It turned out he had been arrested for stealing $7,000 in merchandise in Cochran County where he had been a deputy before coming to Tulia. Here's one half of the kicker. Coleman's boss, Sheriff Larry Stewart, was the one who had to arrest him on the warrant from the other county - six months into the sting operation. The sheriff and the county District Attorney kept the arrest quiet after Coleman agreed to pay restitution to his victims. The second half of the kicker is that District Judge Ed Self, when he found out about Coleman's arrest, after the third trial, sealed the information and wouldn't allow defense attorneys to use it. More convictions followed. It took years, but the wheels of real justice started to turn in the opposite direction. The state appeals court sent four cases back because they wanted to know if the convictions were based only on Coleman's testimony. Judge Self was disqualified when he made comments to the local newspapers (one opining that the defendants were "scum bags") that made it appear he had already decided the defendants' guilt. With an outside judge now on the bench, Coleman's testimony continued. It got so bad the trial was stopped. All sides agreed that Coleman's testimony could not be trusted. Here's why: One of those arrested was in Oklahoma City at the time Coleman said he purchased drugs from her. She had dated and timed receipts from transactions to prove her whereabouts. Another defendant provided time sheets showing he was at work when Coleman said he was doing a drug deal with him. Coleman himself admitted to some "mess ups." On Monday, 12 of the defendants were released from prison and the person to thank wasn't the ACLU defense team or the NAACP lawyers, but a white farmer named Gary Gardner. When Moore was arrested, Gardner knew something was wrong and started writing letters. Moore had worked for Gardner and he called the charges against him "ludicrous." Finally, according to the NPR report, the state's "premier political journal, the Texas Observer" got the story and soon others followed, including the advocacy organizations. There are several dynamics going on in Tulia. A retired minister, Charles Kiker, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said, "We are isolated out here. And perhaps the civil rights movement passed us by." But shopkeeper Pat Devin said that while Coleman was "overzealous," some of the defendants were guilty. The wheels of justice moved slowly. Fortunately, in these cases they started to move without the racial grease that had been applied by the sheriff, his deputy, the judge and juries. And to cap it all off, if an old white farmer hadn't been sensitive to the injustices, the wheels might not have moved in the right direction at all. Who says there's no progress? Charles E. Richardson's columns appear Tuesday and Sunday. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom