Pubdate: Fri,  1 Nov 2002
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: JAMES KIMBERLY

AFTER DRUG BUST GOES AWRY, ACLU ALLEGES RACISM

No one disputes that the confidential informant who claimed he bought drugs 
from 28 black people in the community of Hearne was trouble.

Robertson County District Attorney John Paschall said the informant, 
Derrick Megress, stole some of the cocaine he was supposed to turn over to 
police as evidence, masking the thefts with flour. Megress also probably 
pocketed some of the money he was supposed to use to buy drugs, Paschall said.

"Unfortunately, we can't get Baptist ministers to go make drug busts," 
Paschall said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, however, believes there is something 
more sinister involved in the November 2000 drug investigation: racism. The 
ACLU intends to file a lawsuit today in U.S. District Court in Austin 
alleging the drug bust was just the latest in a long line conducted by the 
South Central Texas Regional Narcotics Task Force and Robertson County 
officials that targeted blacks.

"Individuals were targeted (in this bust) and in years past based on their 
race and despite the fact that they were innocent. It's intentional," said 
Graham Boyd, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project.

"The statistics are quite staggering," Boyd said. "In the arrests in 
November of 2000, 15 percent of the young black men in town (were picked 
up). A similar number have been arrested in each and every year for the 
last 10 years."

The ACLU compares the Hearne bust to the now-infamous 1999 drug sting in 
the Panhandle community of Tulia, where a white undercover police officer 
targeted the town's small black population. In a town of 4,600, the Tulia 
drug sweep netted 46 arrests, almost all of them black, even though blacks 
make up just 5 percent of the town's population. That investigation has 
since been discredited.

By comparison, Hearne is a diverse community of 5,000 just north of College 
Station on U.S. 190. Blacks make up 45 percent of the population, but the 
county district attorney and commanders of the drug task force are white, 
the ACLU points out.

The investigation that culminated in November 2000 with the arrests of 28 
people on felony charges of possessing or distributing crack cocaine began 
more than six months earlier with a letter from Megress, Paschall said. At 
the time, Megress was in the Robertson County Jail, accused of burglarizing 
a home.

Megress wrote the drug task force and said he could help them with an 
investigation in exchange for leniency in his case. Paschall offered 
Megress a sentence of probation on the burglary charge if Megress gathered 
evidence for drug cases against 20 people.

Paschall said task force officers tried to protect the integrity of the 
investigation. Police outfitted Megress with a hidden tape recorder and 
searched him before and after the buys, Paschall said.

Megress turned in his evidence, a Robertson County grand jury returned 
indictments and the defendants were rounded up.

Regina Kelly, 25, said officers came for her the evening of Nov. 2, 2000, 
at the restaurant where she was a waitress.

The mother of four sat in jail for 20 days before her bail was lowered from 
$70,000 to $10,000. She was released after her mother posted $1,000 and the 
title to her property.

Kelly insists she never bought or sold drugs. Her court-appointed attorney 
urged her to enter into a plea bargain with prosecutors and accept a 
sentence of probation. She refused.

Eight other defendants took the offer, according to Robertson County 
records. One was sentenced to eight years in prison; seven others received 
probation. Problems with the case became apparent when one man, Corvian 
Workman, took his case to trial.

The tape Megress made of an alleged drug buy with Workman was 
unintelligible. The jury that heard the evidence against Workman could not 
reach a verdict.

"I've been prosecuting long enough to know if the jury is hung up 11-1 for 
acquittal you've got a problem," Paschall said.

Paschall interviewed jurors after the case. They told him they didn't 
believe Megress.

After the trial, Paschall asked Megress to take a polygraph test in which 
he was asked whether he stole drugs or money. Megress failed, Paschall 
said. Paschall said he dismissed the cases against 17 defendants. The 
disposition of the remaining cases was unavailable.

Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU in Texas, said Paschall 
dropped the cases after the ACLU complained about the investigation to the 
U.S. attorney general. Paschall denies that was the reason.

"I didn't have any pressure from anybody. I did what I thought was right," 
he said.

Paschall also denies the ACLU's charge that the task force is motivated by 
race.

"If you have a black informant, if he is going to buy drugs from people he 
knows, they are going to happen to be black drug dealers," he said.

Paschall said he has no intention of reopening the cases against the seven 
people who pleaded guilty and got sentences of probation. The defendants 
admitted selling drugs, he said.

But even those who were not convicted have been affected.

"Even though it was dismissed it is hard for me to get a decent job because 
that is on my record," Kelly said. "Some people look at you differently. 
You're not the same person they knew. They think, 'Maybe she was a drug 
dealer.' "
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens