Pubdate: Thu, 29 Aug 2002
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2002 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Jim Yardley, New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?118 (Perjury)

TEXAS TO PROBE DRUG SWEEP CRITICIZED AS RACIALLY BIASED

In 1999, Many Blacks In Town Were Arrested On One Man's Testimony

HOUSTON -- Attorney General John Cornyn of Texas has opened an 
investigation into a 1999 drug sweep in which about 12 percent of the black 
population of Tulia, Texas, was arrested. The decision failed to appease 
civil rights lawyers, who describe the arrests in an undercover operation 
as atrocities and want the convictions overturned.

Cornyn, who announced the investigation Monday, suggested that he had 
opened the inquiry partly because of confusion that had arisen this month 
about whether the U.S. Justice Department was continuing its own civil 
rights investigation of more than two years.

The confusion arose after a Justice Department official, in a letter to the 
American Bar Association, described the investigation as closed. Justice 
Department officials now say the letter was "in error" and that the 
investigation is continuing.

In July 1999, 46 people, all but three of them black, were arrested on drug 
charges in Tulia, a town of about 5,000 people. In nearly every case, the 
only evidence against the defendants was the testimony of a sole undercover 
agent, Tom Coleman.

Civil rights groups have focused their criticism on Coleman, who was 
working for the Swisher County Sheriff's Office when he engineered the 
arrests in Tulia after what he said was an 18-month undercover 
investigation of drug trafficking.

Coleman worked alone, wore no wire, collected no video evidence, kept scant 
written records and produced little corroborating evidence at trials. He 
had little experience in undercover work. The convictions in the Tulia 
cases were based largely on his testimony.

After the arrests, Cornyn named Coleman the state's "lawman of the year" 
for 1999.

Jeff Blackburn, an Amarillo, Texas, lawyer representing more than 20 
defendants in the cases, said 13 people remained in jail on sentences as 
long as 320 years. Blackburn said lawyers were filing motions seeking new 
trials in every case.

The announcement from Cornyn comes as he is running for a vacant seat in 
the U.S. Senate against Mayor Ron Kirk of Dallas, who is trying to become 
the state's first black senator. The Tulia cases have not become a major 
issue in the Senate race, but groups including the NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and 
the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized the drug arrests as 
racially biased.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.
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