Pubdate: Fri, 01 Mar 2002
Source: Texas Observer (TX)
Copyright: 2002 The Texas Observer
Contact:  http://www.texasobserver.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/748
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n028/a06.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas)

DALLAS AND TULIA:  A TALE OF TWO CITIES

WAR NEWS Over 70 pending drug cases and convictions have been dismissed or 
vacated in Dallas in the wake of a police scandal broken last month by The 
Dallas Morning News and WFAA television. The prosecutions all involved 
large undercover buys of cocaine or methamphetamine by the same team of 
officers, using the same confidential informant. Belated testing of 
evidence in one case revealed that the dope was phony, which led to more 
widespread testing and the startling revelation that half of all the 
cocaine seized by the Dallas Police Department last year was actually 
powdered gypsum. You know it as Sheetrock, but the cops apparently didn't 
know it from shit. Or did they? The informant, who earned about $200,000 in 
fees for his services last year, told the News that he wasn't the one to 
blame for the phony drugs, raising the possibility that the officers (two 
of whom have been suspended pending the outcome of an FBI investigation) 
were in on the bogus deals. Then, just when things were getting 
interesting, Whoops! the talkative informant found himself deported. It 
remains to be seen what effect that untimely development will have on the 
investigation.

Several of the defendants have already been deported as well, so their 
dismissals will come as little consolation. But at least the Dallas 
District Attorney, Bill Hill, had the good sense to throw out the 
prosecutions, rather than stick by the questionable evidence. In some 
instances, Hill had no choice but to drop the cases, thanks to a new law 
passed by the state legislature last session. In press reports, 
spokespersons for police and prosecutors have cited a new evidence 
corroboration law as one reason they went back and took a harder look at 
the evidence in these cases. Sponsored by Juan Hinojosa (D-McAllen), the 
new law was one of last session's Tulia bills, conceived by the Texas ACLU 
and inspired by the Observer's reporting on the Panhandle drug scandal of 
1999-2000, a disaster which has some remarkable parallels to the current 
controversy. The new law prevents prosecutors from making cases based 
solely on evidence provided by a confidential informant. Several of the 
Dallas cases had no corroborating evidence (e.g. audio, video, 
eyewitnesses, etc.), hence they had to be thrown out, regardless of whether 
the dope was phony or not.

The Tulia cases were made by an undercover officer, not an informant, so 
the bill would not have applied in those cases. (The ACLU originally sought 
to have it apply to officers as well, and will likely come back to the lege 
with that change next session.) But the real difference between the Tulia 
and Dallas scandals has been the district attorneys involved. While Hill 
sought to come clean as soon as he saw the writing on the wall, Tulia D.A. 
Terry McEachern has stuck by his narc, Tom Coleman, despite the complete 
lack of corroboration of his testimony, the highly suspicious nature of the 
buys he made, and the seemingly endless cascade of unflattering revelations 
about his personal and professional past. To date there have been no 
reversed convictions or successful appeals in Tulia. Two outstanding 
indictments have yet to be prosecuted: They are Tanya White, set for trial 
on April 16, and Zuri Bossett, set for July 23. Both are represented by 
Amarillo defense attorney Jeff Blackburn.
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