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The
Texas observer story by Nat Blakesee | our
first Tulia page
Tulia (2) 2006
update (not a good outcome!)
Saskatchewan or Texas: Where will
justice come first?
Who will
be exonorated first? The 46 falsely accused in Tulia, Texas or
the 25 falsely accused in Saskatoon and Martensville? Tom Coleman
is no longer in law enforcement but Dueck is Superintendant.
A Texas judge has ruled frame-up by Coleman was a disgrace to
the Texas justice system. What will a Saskatchewan trial judge
determine about Dueck's case when it comes to trial September
8?
Partway to Freedom
June 16, 2003, By BOB HERBERT,
New York Times
AMARILLO, Tex. - At least
12 of the people who were sent to prison on the word of a lying,
reckless, bigoted lawman in Tulia, Tex., will tep into the sweet
light and fresh air of freedom this afternoon. But they have
not yet been exonerated.
District Judge Ron Chapman,
who has thoroughly investigated the case and recommended that
all convictions be thrown out, will authorize the release of
the prisoners at a special bail hearing in Tulia today. Because
of jurisdictional reasons, three others who are still in prison
will not be part of today's proceedings. A decision on whether
to release one other prisoner today had not been reached by last
night.
Every branch of the Texas state
government has now acknowledged, in one form or another, that
the Tulia defendants were railroaded. Two weeks ago, in an extraordinary
ceremony for a state that likes to view itself as beyond tough
on crime, Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill that permitted Judge
Chapman to grant bail to those who were still behind bars.
The 16 people still imprisoned
were among 46 Tulia residents arrested on felony drug charges
four years ago after an absurd "deep undercover" investigation
by a clownish officer named Tom Coleman. The men and women targeted
by Mr. Coleman were characterized as major drug traffickers.
But no drugs, guns or money were recovered when they were rounded
up, publicly humiliated and paraded before the news media, which
had been alerted in advance.
The subsequent trials were
outrageous pro forma proceedings in which convictions were a
foregone conclusion. After the first few trials resulted in grotesque
sentences - in some cases, 90 years or more - the remaining defendants
began lining up to plead guilty in return for lesser punishment.
A total of 38 defendants either were convicted or pleaded guilty.
Mr. Coleman's activities in
Tulia have since been completely discredited, and he's been indicted
for perjury. Prosecutors threw in the towel in April. They said
they had made a terrible mistake in relying on Mr. Coleman's
uncorroborated testimony, and they agreed that all convictions,
including those of individuals who had pleaded guilty, should
be overturned.
But justice is always elusive
in Texas, so that was not the end of the story. Judge Chapman's
formal recommendation that the convictions be overturned has
to be approved by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which
has not yet acted. And no one knows when it will act or what
it will do. Meanwhile, the convictions stand.
The prospect of the Tulia defendants
sitting in prison for months while awaiting a decision from the
Court of Criminal Appeals led the State Legislature to pass the
bill that made the granting of bail possible.
State Senator John Whitmire,
chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, said, "It is
clear to me that the only reasonable alternative at this point
is to release these individuals."
An unfavorable ruling by the
Court of Criminal Appeals could result in the defendants' being
sent back to prison. But there is another potential route to
exoneration. Governor Perry has asked the Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles to review the Tulia convictions to determine if some
form of clemency is in order. In a letter to the board's chairman,
Gerald Garrett, Governor Perry wrote:
"I urge you to begin an
expeditious investigation into each of these cases and recommend
whether a pardon, commutation of sentence or other clemency action
is appropriate and just."
He added: "A recent review
by the trial court concluded that the key witness, an undercover
agent, was not credible."
Among the prisoners to be released
today is Joe Moore, a pig farmer, now in his 60's, who was sentenced
to 90 years. I remember standing outside his vacant and absolute
ruin of a house, his shack, and thinking, "This has to be
the most poverty-stricken drug kingpin ever."
Mr. Moore nearly died from
illness while in prison.
Elaine Jones, president of
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents
several of the people still in prison, told me yesterday: "I
can't get into a celebratory mood yet. This is progress, but
the convictions have not been overturned and our clients will
still be under the jurisdiction of the state, even after they're
released. I don't want anybody to lose sight of that."
12 Freed in Appeal of
Texas Drug Busts
By BETSY BLANEY, Associated
Press Writer
TULIA, Texas - A dozen blacks
jailed in a series of small-town drug busts that were based on
the now-discredited testimony of a single undercover agent were
freed on bail Monday pending appeals.
A special prosecutor has said
he will dismiss the cases if an appeals court orders new trials.
Civil rights advocates decried
the arrests and a judge had recommended that the convictions
be overturned. A bill signed by Gov. Rick Perry two weeks ago
cleared the way for their release.
"There are a great number
of people who have a great deal of time, effort and faith in
each of you invested," said Judge Ron Chapman, a retired
state district judge appointed to preside in the case, as he
ordered the 12 released. "Your friends and loved ones are
counting on you."
"We have good people here
in Tulia," Freddie Brookins Jr. said as he walked free after
serving four years of a 20-year sentence. "There's no doubt
about it, we have great people here in Tulia."
"I got something to smile
about today," Brookins' father said. "It's been a lot
of hard work that's gone into this."
A 13th defendant, Daniel Olivarez,
22, will remain in custody because there is a hold on him from
Potter County, which is outside Chapman's jurisdiction. A 14th
defendant included in the bill, Cash Love, was ineligible for
bail because his case is pending on direct appeal.
Love's wife, Kizzie White,
26, was among those freed. "I just wanted to get a hold
of my kids," she said of 6-year-old Cash and 9-year-old
Roneisha.
Forty-six people, 39 of whom
are black, were arrested and accused of possessing cocaine following
an 18-month undercover operation in the Texas Panhandle town
by Tom Coleman, now under indictment on perjury charges.
Coleman, who is white, claimed
he bought drugs from the defendants during an 18-month investigation
in which he worked alone and used no audio or video surveillance.
No drugs or money were found during the arrests.
One defendant had an alibi
but the other 38 were convicted on Coleman's uncorroborated word
or accepted plea agreements out of fear of lengthy prison terms.
The remainder of the 38 had
already been paroled or released on probation.
The bust drew national attention
and led to investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice (news
- web sites) and the Texas Attorney General's office.
The 12 were released Monday
from Swisher County Jail on personal recognizance bonds - not
having to post any money - pending a ruling on appeals by the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The appeals court had ordered
evidentiary hearings for four of the defendants.
In late April, Coleman was
indicted on three charges of aggravated perjury stemming from
his testimony during the hearings, which Chapman oversaw.
Chapman said Coleman was not
a credible witness and recommended the appeals court overturn
the convictions of all 38 defendants.
He found fault with the district
attorney and Coleman's supervisors in the Swisher County Sheriff's
Department and the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task
Force.
His report called Coleman,
who is no longer in law enforcement, "the most devious,
nonresponsive witness this court has witnessed in 25 years on
the bench in Texas."
Coleman's "blatant perjury"
during the Tulia prosecutions "so undermines the court's
confidence in the validity of the convictions entered in those
cases that it would be a travesty of justice to permit the applicants'
convictions to stand," a filing to the appeals court signed
by Chapman states.
The Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles is another avenue that could clear the records of
the 38. In May, Perry asked the board to review their cases.
Mattie White's 27-year-old
son and 26-year-old daughter were among the 12. She said before
the hearing that she had all but given up hope that she would
ever again be reunited with them.
"I thought, `It's not
going to ever happen.' I would go off and cry to myself,"
White said.
The Tulia Story Isn't Over
By BOB HERBERT, NY Times
Op-Ed, April 28, 2003
 A
grand jury in Texas has indicted the ex-cop who conducted a slimy
undercover operation that devastated much of the black community
in the small Panhandle town of Tulia.
But we should hold off on the
champagne toasts. The perjury indictment against Thomas Coleman,
a self-styled "deep undercover" narcotics agent who
concocted one of the worst criminal justice atrocities of recent
years, is not really that big a deal.
Thirteen of the people improperly
targeted by Mr. Coleman's racist, lunatic investigation are still
locked in the hellish environment of Texas state prison. And
the lies that Mr. Coleman is accused of telling under oath were
not directly related to his investigation in Tulia, which has
now been officially discredited.
It would be outrageous if Mr.
Coleman was nailed for perjury but the higher-ups who enthusiastically
encouraged his activities - and prosecuted and imprisoned his
victims - were allowed to escape all responsibility for their
actions.
Mr. Coleman's undercover operation
and his uncorroborated, unsubstantiated testimony led to the
imprisonment of more than three dozen individuals, nearly all
of them black. When the defendants were rounded up in a humiliating
series of arrests on July 23, 1999, the police found no guns,
no drugs and no money.
The defendants were characterized
as major drug dealers and vilified in Tulia's small-town, racially
charged environment. Some of the sentences were extraordinarily,
cruelly long - 90 years and more.
It has since been shown that
Mr. Coleman was a bizarre individual who fingered people who
were obviously innocent, scrawled important investigative information
on various parts of his body, had been in trouble with the law
himself, had once blown out the windshield of a patrol car with
a shotgun, had routinely referred to blacks as "niggers,"
and had a widespread professional reputation as unreliable and
untrustworthy.
In short, Tom Coleman was a
clown, although a dangerous one. His activities should be thoroughly
investigated by competent authorities, and his superiors should
be investigated as well.
In Texas the Tulia fiasco was
characterized as a criminal justice triumph. Mr. Coleman was
hailed as a hero and presented with the state's "Lawman
of the Year" award by John Cornyn, who was then the state
attorney general and has since been elected a United States senator
from Texas.
"Tulia is not just the
story of a rogue cop," said Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is handling
the appeals of several Tulia defendants.
Among the larger issues here
are why this happened at all, who allowed it to happen and why
the law enforcement establishment refused to intervene even after
it was clear that a great injustice was occurring.
Tom Coleman's activities were
financed by the federal government. He was hired and was supposed
to have been supervised by the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task
Force, one of the many federally financed task forces that are
supposed to be waging an all-out war against the scourge of drugs
in the U.S.
The task forces in Texas are
great examples of a drug war gone haywire. They squander millions
of dollars on amateurish investigations that snare mostly low-level
offenders, and they tend to focus like lasers on people who are
black or Hispanic.
The way the money is distributed
by the Department of Justice encourages the task forces to rack
up as many arrests as possible, whether they are quality arrests
or not. The more people they arrest, the more money the task
forces get.
In Tulia, Tom Coleman's capers
were so freakish they became impossible to defend. Last month
the authorities threw in the towel. Prosecutors conceded that
they had made an awful mistake in relying on Mr. Coleman's uncorroborated
testimony and moved in court to overturn every conviction, including
those in which defendants pleaded guilty. (Some defendants, after
seeing the excessively harsh sentences being handed down, rushed
to plead guilty in exchange for more lenient punishment.)
The Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals has the final say on whether the convictions will be
vacated. The decent thing to do at this point would be to ease
the suffering of the 13 individuals still incarcerated by releasing
them on bail pending the final ruling of the appeals court.
That would be the decent and
honorable thing to do. But this is Texas we're talking about.
Copyright 2003 The
New York Times Company
Judge says throw out
Tulia drug convictions
Associated Press, April
1, 2003
TULIA -- A judge recommended
today that a higher court overturn 38 drug convictions that defense
attorneys claimed were racially motivated.
The 1999 arrests stemmed from
the work of a single undercover agent whom other law-enforcement
officials said had faced theft charges and used a racial epithet.
The Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals had ordered a hearing to review evidence against four
of the defendants. The star witness during the hearing, which
began last month and was scheduled to resume today, was undercover
agent Thomas Coleman.
"It is stipulated by all
parties and approved by the court that Tom Coleman is simply
not a credible witness under oath," said retired state district
Judge Ron Chapman of Dallas, who presided over the hearing.
Chapman recommended that the
appeals court grant new trials to everyone convicted as a result
of the busts.
In all, 46 people were arrested,
39 of them black. Thirteen are still in prison. Others served
time or were sentenced to probation.
An attorney with the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People said it was
"hugely significant" that prosecutors acknowledged
flaws in their cases.
"This is wonderful news,
though nothing is final as of yet," said Vanita Gupta. "But
we are very pleased that Tom Coleman's word can't be the basis
of any standing conviction."
Jeff Blackburn, an Amarillo
attorney representing two of the four men whose arrests were
examined in the hearing, predicted Chapman's recommendation would
carry much weight with the appellate court.
Coleman, who was due to resume
his testimony that was halted when the hearing adjourned March
21, was not in the courthouse.
The arrests on charges of possessing
and selling crack and powdered cocaine hinged on uncorroborated
testimony by Coleman, the lone undercover drug agent in the 18-month
operation. Coleman used no audio or video surveillance, often
writing notes about his alleged buys on his legs.
Police found no drugs on any
of the suspects arrested during the largest sweep.
Complaints by civil rights
groups helped focus international attention on the Panhandle
town of 5,000 midway between Lubbock and Amarillo. The arrests
hit a large portion of the town's black population, which numbers
only in the hundreds.
The Justice Department and
the Texas attorney general's office are investigating the cases.
The Latest From Tulia
By BOB HERBERT, NEw York
Times, December 26, 2002
Some tentative, very preliminary
steps are being taken to address one of the great miscarriages
of justice in the country - the roundup and prosecution of dozens
of black men and women on specious drug trafficking charges in
the Texas Panhandle town of Tulia.
There is no reason to believe
that any of the people arrested in the humiliating roundup on
July 23, 1999, were guilty of trafficking. No drugs, money or
weapons were found. Several defendants have already been proved
innocent. All were arrested solely on the word of a clownish
undercover cop named Tom Coleman who had a penchant for making
up charges, throwing his "evidence" into the garbage,
scrawling important investigative information on his arms and
legs, changing his testimony from trial to trial, making false
statements while under oath, referring to black people as "niggers,"
and stumbling into legal trouble himself.
On the uncorroborated, unsubstantiated
testimony of this officer, defendants arrested in Tulia on that
shameful summer day were convicted and given prison sentences
of 20 years, 60 years, 90 years and more. When the first astonishingly
harsh sentences were handed down, the remaining defendants quickly
began agreeing to plead guilty in return for more lenient punishment.
Thirteen defendants remain in prison, serving sentences of up
to 99 years.
In the bleak and twisted world
of criminal justice in Texas, this case was considered cause
for celebration. Mr. Coleman was hailed as a hero and given the
state's "Lawman of the Year" award.
Local officials had every reason
to believe that no one would pay attention to the terrible doings
in Tulia. But the media spotlight has remained on the fiasco
and the case has become a Texas-sized embarrassment. The offices
of the U.S. attorney general, John Ashcroft, and the Texas attorney
general, John Cornyn, have said they are investigating. But the
investigations have been extremely quiet and so far no developments
have been reported.
There has been a significant
development in the courts, however. The Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals, responding to petitions filed by a local attorney, Jeff
Blackburn, and lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund, has sent a number of the cases back to the trial court
for additional fact-finding.
Among other things, the appeals
court wants to know if there was evidence available to impeach
Mr. Coleman's testimony, and if there had been any knowledge
by the prosecution of such evidence.
Ordinarily the original trial
judge would handle the response to the request by the appeals
court. But District Judge Ed Self, who presided over most of
the Tulia trials, recused himself after defense lawyers called
his impartiality into question. The judge, who had leaned heavily
in favor of the prosecution during the trials, defended his rulings
in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper last month. He
was also quoted as saying that local residents were "tired
of all the talk about the drug bust."
 A new judge from an entirely different
judicial district - Judge Ron Chapman of Dallas - has been assigned
to the case. This is a very hopeful sign. The criminal justice
crowd in and around Tulia worked as a team to perpetrate this
outrage. And these good ol' officials have shown no inclination
to blow the whistle on their own bad behavior. A pair of fresh
and impartial eyes is in order.
Meanwhile, the district attorney
who prosecuted most of the Tulia cases, Terry McEachern, has
a problem of his own to deal with. He was arrested in New Mexico
the day before Thanksgiving on a misdemeanor charge of driving
while intoxicated. Police said he was pulled over after his Jeep
Cherokee was spotted weaving from lane to lane. He reportedly
said he had consumed some alcohol and also the prescription drug
Valium. But he said he was not drunk. He refused to take a blood
alcohol test.
John Cornyn, the state attorney
general whose office is supposed to be investigating the Tulia
arrests, had a much better November. Mr. Cornyn, who actually
presented Tom Coleman with his Texas "Lawman of the Year"
award, was elected to the United States Senate. He will take
his seat as part of the Republican majority in January.
2006
update (not a good outcome!)
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
