Unfortunately from the previous link:
I guess the county thought they weren’t screwed enough.
Great fucking day to be an American eh?
I can’t beilieve the governor still has not acted to free these people. He certainly could get them out of jail while the state courts do what it takes to clear their name.
An old man in ill health is sitting in jail because some asshole lied, another asshole prosecuted and the people who could set it right won’t do anything faster than absolutely neccesary. If it were not for the ACLU they still would not even have this hope.
Truer words were never spoken.
It is way past time for Americans to wake up to this fact. IMO the War on (some) Drugs is the number 1 threat to our rights as a free people in this country. The Bill of Rights are run over on a daily basis in our “witch hunt” we call the WOD. :mad:
I was delighted to see that the convictions are being vacated, but I agree: $250,000 to compensate 38 people for spending time in prison? What the hell is that?
I’d say at a minimum each person should be paid for their prison time a salary equal to what the prosecutor who sent them to prison earns. The state ought to take out the trash in the Tulia “justice” system.
Does anyone know if Coleman is facing charges for his atrocious criminal behavior in this case?
Daniel
I remember hearing about this case a year or so ago. I found it outrageous then, even more so now. Since I have not read or heard any updates in the news in all that time, I assumed the ACLU got involved and had these convictions overturned.
Why is the ACLU not all over this and what is this Coleman prick getting out of all this?
It seems that Texas is slowly … maybe … inching toward a semblance of justice in this case:
====================
Judge recommends overturning drug conviction
Former undercover investigator Tom Coleman ‘is simply not a credible witness,’ a judge said.
TULIA, Texas (AP) – The drug convictions of 38 mostly black defendants from a farm town in the Texas Panhandle should be thrown out because they were based on questionable testimony from a single undercover agent accused of racial prejudice, a judge said Tuesday.
==================
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/04/02/tulia.drug.busts.ap/index.html
But hey, this is Texas … so don’t hold your breath.
Hey now, while I don’t think Coleman is anything but a bigot and a liar it seems a little harsh to judge a whole state by the actions of a single county.
I live in a small town not far from Tulia and you can go “across the tracks” and buy all the drugs you need 24-7. Despite a heavy police presence, drug dealing is still job #1. Recently the violence there has been escalating, so business is expanding…right into my neighborhood.
I am not saying all the action is from the African-American population, many whites frequent the area also.
I wish the police would try to contain the dealing, but it seems they are afraid to do anything. Riots flare up when they make a bust. Status quo works as long as it is going on “down there”.
I wish I didn’t have 15 cars an hour stop in front of my house to visit my neighbors for 2 minutes at a time.
Maybe Jeff Blackburn and the ACLU could help me sue for sleep deprivation.
Sorry for the hijack…I wish all those people hadn’t been railroaded by a few rednecks. That was wrong, terribly wrong.
If, however, you think that all small West Texas towns are free from a rampant drug dealing culture centering in the African- American community, you are mistaken. Sorry.
Flame suit on, but maybe somebody can tell me how to rid my neighborhood from drug dealers while they are flaming me.
Duke, I don’t see why you’d be flamed. Being opposed to racist cops throwing innocent people in jail doesn’t equate to being in favor of drug dealers. And while I don’t know your area, it’s perfectly plausible that there are more black than white drug dealers there. Saying that doesn’t indict black people in general, any more than it exonerates white people in general.
Assuming we’re gonna have a drug war, we ought to prosecute the actual dealers. Not as strongly as we prosecute Coleman, mind you – I don’t think most dealers are sending innocent people to prison for years at a time.
Daniel
Yes, everyone knows that Texas is only home to outlaws and the bounty hunters who hunt them. We all carry 6-shooters and ride horses. Every saturday we lynch a random black person or as everyone in Texas calls them “negros”. Then we have a picnic and sing songs about “W” at our ranches.
Why is it that California or Ohio can have week long race riots in a large city and no one says “But after all this is California” to explain it. But if anything happens in some nowhere town in Texas, that I and most other Texans have never even heard of, like Tulia or Vider, and all these people who have never been to Texas start acting like it’s under apartheid or something.
Because in another state, say like Illinois if such a thing came to national attention there might be more of a chance that someone would do something. I am not saying that Illinois does not have its own share of overzealous prosecutors or lying ass police. Just that there seem to be a few more people concerned about the overzealous prosecutors and lying ass police, and we have been lucky enough to have some people trying to do something about it, like a govenor who refused to fry the guys that were convictied after police tortured confessions out of them, and now, states attorney’s that are training prosecuters in how to spot false confessions so that we can hope fewer people will be falsley convicted.
It was Texas that got the USSC to halt its 300th execution, because there were doubt about the guy’s actual guilt. What is more, since this Tulia crap happened under the watch of our current President of the United States, I for one think that the DoJ is less inclined to investigate than say if this occurred ANYWHERE ELSE.
I also think that if it were ANYWHERE ELSE, once a judge said, yeah these convictions should be overturned and even got a deal together that saved the state huge potential lawsuit settlements, the governor might actually step in and release the unjustly imprisoned using his power of clemency pending the state courts clearing their names completely.
ALL 38 CONVICTIONS OVERTURNED!
About fuckin’ time justice was done.
There is a God.
After all the bad and distressing news lately, I am deeply happy that these folks finally got justice. Now if only that Coleman sack of shit could get what he deserves…
My comment, TitoBenito, while seemingly painting with an overly broad brush, was based on the statewide track record on this particular case, which all reasonable people agree was dreadful.
I was expressing my frustration at how officials not only in Tulia, but in Swisher County and at the statehouse and governor’s mansion in Austin as well, all turned a blind eye to this stinking mess. From an outsider looking in, government officials from all over the state who could have done something about this, all dragged their feet instead of doing the right thing ASAP.
So you may have interpreted my remark as tarring the entire population of Texas, but I was only slamming the state’s do-nothing public officials
<digression>
Believe me, I’m sensitive to this kind of stuff. I’ll be travelling to Europe later this month, and I wonder how I, an American, will be perceived by the folks I come in contact with, the majority of whom are opposed to the American invasion of Iraq. I will have to explain to them, when the topic arises (as it enevitably will), that not 100% of the American people are behind Bush’s actions.
Yet I will be perceived, I’m sure, as representing the American government, which I surely do not.
P.S. I had the same problem when Jesse Ventura was the Oberfürer, er, Governor, of my fair state. I was the butt of jokes from all outstaters I met … all the while swearing over and over again that I never voted for the guy and was a very outspoken critic of his actions.
</digression>
See, there’s the problem. Government in Texas is tremendously decentralized. Prosecution is at the county level - there is no state elected official with control over local prosecutors. The Governor is something of a figurehead. The most powerful statewide official is the Lieutenant Governor. I don’t know of anyone who fits in the bolded text above.
There just isn’t very much that the rest of the state can do when one location gets it wrong.
I totally agree that the Texas government should have done a whole lot more. Unfortunatly for Texans, our Governor is composed of discarded Ken doll parts and old tape recordings of GW, so he really can’t be counted on to do anything intellegent. But I do think this kind of thing can happen in other places. Sadly, injustice and bigotry is often swept under the rug in small towns across the US not just in Texas. When something happens in a place like Tulia (which I had never heard of before this incident) most Texans won’t even hear about it up till the it really boils over nationaly. If it would have happened in Houston or Austin I’m almost certain there would have been a statewide outrage and something would have been done.
Not sure if any of you are aware, but on Wednesday the Federal Appellate courts overturned this case and all 38(?) busted in the sting have had their sentences overturned. Racial motivation was the charge.
Sam
Oh. My. God.
TitoBenito, this made me laugh so hard that I literally couldn’t breathe for about 50 seconds. My abs will not be thanking you in the morning. (I know, it’s already morning, but I bartend so this is my bedtime.)
I think the misconception here is that b/c this happened in TX, and there was a small town and Barney Fife-style cop involved, somehow the whole state of Texas was in on it and smiles on this sort of behavior…because we are, after all, really nothing more than some Lone-Star-waving, gun-toting, spur-wearing, Bush-hugging, mouth-full-of-marbles morons.
Without making the mistake of critiquing a generalization by making another one, in my personal experience this is a common misconception about Texas. All cliches have some measure of truth; there are plenty of tiny towns in Texas I’ve never seen or even heard of–Tulia being one of ‘em–and what goes on there really isn’t my forte. This is a huge freakin’ state.
But there are dirty/biased cops, racism, and hatred everywhere; I don’t condemn the city of LA for Rodney King, or the state of Arkansas for Bill Clinton. I think it’s unfair to condemn Texas for the behavior of its worst citizens.
"One of his supervisors with the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force, Lt. Michael Amos, testified that Coleman had “an exceptional talent at being an undercover officer.”
But Amos acknowledged that Coleman’s previous employers had told his staff Coleman … tended to run to his mother for help."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Jomo Mojo, unless you are Arianna Huffington, please refrain from reprinting a significant portion of her article, particularly since you didn’t attribute it.
TitoBenito, don’t do this again. I’m gonna get served with a noise complaint for laughing this loud.
Update:
Tom Coleman, the prick responsible for this has been indicted. Too bad the judge can’t sentence him to a communal bitch-slapping by the innocents he sent to jail.