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35 Tulia Defendants Pardoned

Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, has granted pardons to 35 defendants caught up in the bogus Tulia, Texas drug sting. Perry said discredited undercover cop Tom Coleman was a big factor in his decision.

Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer in Amarillo who represents many of the people pardoned yesterday, said indiscriminate spending in the war on drugs was to blame for the debacle in Tulia. He was especially critical of the Texas Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force, a federally financed consortium of 26 Texas counties based in Amarillo.

"The government agency that caused the Tulia fiasco was the task force," Mr. Blackburn said. "They were the group that hired Coleman. They were that group that allegedly supervised Coleman. We believe it was this group that 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."

The pardons will allow those receiving them to sue for damages. Most have settled with local officials for $250,000, but they remain free to sue the task force that employed Coleman.

Coleman is white. 39 of the 46 defendants were black. Here are some details about Coleman and his conduct:

At a hearing in Tulia in March, Mr. Coleman, who is white, and other witnesses testified about his troubled law enforcement career, unorthodox methods, pervasive errors, combustible temperament and what apparently was racism. Mr. Coleman blithely conceded that he routinely used the most charged racial slur.

Mr. Coleman also testified that although most of the drug transactions he swore to were in public places, he did not wear a recording device, arrange for video surveillance, ask anyone to observe the deals or fingerprint the plastic bags containing the drugs.

He worked alone and did not tape record his drug buys. Instead, he said, he would jot down information on his leg. No drugs, weapons or large sums of cash were found during the mass arrest of 46 people, 39 of them black, in 1999.

Here is our prior coverage of the Tulia case.

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