“It really takes a lot off your mind,” said Freddie Brookins Jr., 26, the son of a Tulia meat packer who served three-and-a-half years of a 20-year sentence. “What hurt the most was that the people in the courtroom and on the jury knew me and knew I hadn’t done it. All of it had to do with race. It’s a stupid way to get people out of town.”
“This is the day that we’ve been fighting for for the past four years,” stated Vanita Gupta, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the prominent national groups that had joined in pursuing the case. This fight for justice had attracted national and international media attention with lawyers taking it up pro bono to overturn the convictions.
Forty-six individuals—39 of them Blacks—were arrested in Tulia on July 23, 1999, in pre-dawn raids on their homes. They were accused by undercover cop Ron Coleman of selling him cocaine over an 18-month period. Coleman had been employed by the state to conduct a sting for the federally funded Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task Force. No evidence was produced during any of the trials to corroborate Coleman’s testimony. After the first several of those convicted were given 60 to 90 year sentences, 27 other defendants accepted plea agreements for lesser time. A total of 800 years in prison and 100 years on probation were handed down.
The frame-ups began to unravel in April 2002 when Tonya White, who was about to go on trial, provided bank records proving that she was 300 miles away in Oklahoma City cashing a check at the exact time Coleman claimed she had delivered cocaine to him.
In a court hearing in March Coleman admitted to using racist slurs and to “some mess-ups” in his efforts to secure convictions. He has now been indicted on perjury charges. The following month a specially appointed state judge reviewing evidence in the Tulia cases found Coleman “simply not a credible witness under oath” and recommended the dismissal of all 38 convictions. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court, is still considering this recommendation. Thirteen of the defendants who remained in prison were released in June after a special act of the Texas legislature allowed them to be freed on bail.
In a news release announcing the pardons, Governor Perry described his action as “appropriate and just,” adding, “Texans demand a justice system that is tough but fair.” Kathy Walt, a spokesperson for the governor, made it clear that the pardons did not include a determination of innocence. According to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, a full pardon does not have the legal effect of expunging a criminal record or of exoneration except in rare cases where a person is also declared to be innocent. This means these Tulia residents will still have the convictions on their records, affecting their ability to get jobs and rent apartments.
Three of the defendants were not granted pardons because of legal technicalities—one is on deferred probation and two others had convictions on their records on other charges.
“The parties responsible for what happened to the people of Tulia have yet to be brought to the bar of justice,” stated Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer in Amarillo who represents many of those just pardoned. “The government agency that caused the Tulia fiasco was the [Texas Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking] task force…. They were the group that hired Coleman.”
This group “encouraged him to make the largest number of cases using whatever methods he chose. The more productive he appeared to be, the more funding money they could get,” Blackburn added. Coleman was awarded Texas Lawman of the Year for 1999.
The pardons open the way for civil suits by those charged in the cases. While many of the defendants have agreed to a settlement of $250,000 in exchange for an agreement not to sue local officials, they remain free to sue the task force. “We’re planning on exhausting every single remedy available to our clients,” stated NAACP attorney Gupta.
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