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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom