Pubdate: Sat, 10 May 2003
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Will Harrell
Note: Will Harrell is the executive director of the American Civil 
Liberties Union of Texas.

UNCORROBORATED EVIDENCE BRINGS SHAKY CONVICTIONS

The Texas Legislature has an opportunity to rectify a terrible injustice 
and to prevent future scandals like the one in Tulia by passing legislation 
requiring corroborating evidence for the testimony of undercover operatives 
in drug enforcement cases.

By now, most every Texan who reads a newspaper knows about the Tulia drug 
busts - 46 people were arrested on the uncorroborated word of an undercover 
peace officer named Tom Coleman in a small town in the Texas Panhandle. A 
judge recently recommended that the 38 convictions obtained through that 
officer's testimony be thrown out because the officer couldn't be 
considered a credible witness.

 From Amarillo to Australia, from Lubbock to London, journalists have posed 
the question: How could that happen in a modern criminal justice system? 
Doesn't the state have to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt?

Not in Texas. Here, the uncorroborated word of a police officer is enough 
to convict anyone of drug charges that could lead to life imprisonment. One 
Tulia defendant, for example, is serving sentences totaling more than 300 
years. Now, it turns out, he may be innocent.

Most police officers never would set up an innocent person. But the handful 
that break the rules cause untold harm. Coupled with large-scale racial 
profiling in undercover drug stings (most of the Tulia defendants were 
black), the failure to require corroboration has magnified individual 
injustices into systemic failures to ensure civil rights and equal 
protection under the law in Texas.

It is hard to understand how a prosecutor, much less a jury, could consider 
the uncorroborated testimony of any one person to prove anything "beyond a 
reasonable doubt," which is the standard the state supposedly must meet in 
criminal cases. By definition, it seems, there is doubt if one man's word 
is the only basis for prosecution. But hundreds, likely thousands, of 
Texans have been incarcerated based on that kind of paltry, unsubstantiated 
evidence.

Undercover drug enforcement is a special case where the public deserves 
special protection. The federal General Accounting Office found in 1998 
that "officers working in ... undercover operations could be more 
vulnerable to involvement in illegal drug activities" and that "special 
drug investigation units with low levels of supervision were ... considered 
high-risk environments for drug-related corruption."

Texas law already requires corroboration for confidential informants in 
undercover drug stings, and that requirement hasn't stemmed the tide of 
informant-based drug convictions one bit. Applying that same requirement to 
undercover police would ensure both fairness and uniformity of quality in 
the prosecutions that do move forward.

Requiring corroboration for testimony is one of the oldest historical 
tenets of justice. In the Bible, Moses, Jesus and the Apostle Paul all 
believed that no person should be held to account on the testimony of a 
single witness but only upon the concurrence of "two or three." Indeed, 
that principle is a bulwark of Mosaic law.

Undercover drug cases may cost thousands of dollars to set up and 
prosecute. So when those cases go sour, they represent large amounts of 
wasted taxpayer dollars. Corroboration makes for better cases and fewer 
taxpayer-funded mishaps.

And it would assure Texans that the state's leadership is committed to 
tolerating no more Tulias. The Legislature should pass Senate Bill 515 and 
House Bill 2625, which would require corroboration in undercover narcotics 
operations and avoid the travesties of justice that now make Texas the 
source of global ridicule.
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