Former Tulia drug agent
guilty of one perjury count
BreakForNews.com,
14th Jan, 2005
"This really isn't about Coleman anymore.
It's about Texas, it's about the war on drugs,
and it's
about restoring sanity to a grotesque criminal justice system.
Will Tom Coleman become the rolling snowball that sparks an avalanche?
Please Jesus, let it be so."
-Alan Bean Tulia, Texas
BETSY
BLANEY AP
LUBBOCK,
Texas - The lone undercover agent in a sting that sent dozens
of black people to prison on bogus drug charges in Tulia was convicted
Friday of one of two perjury counts.
Tom Coleman was acquitted of testifying falsely in a 2003 hearing that as a sheriff's deputy he never stole gas from county pumps, but he was found guilty of saying that he didn't learn about the theft charge against him until August 1998.
Jurors were to begin hearing evidence in the penalty phase of the trial later Friday. Aggravated perjury is a third-degree felony and carries a maximum 10-year sentence and $10,000 fine.
Coleman had no noticeable reaction as the verdict was read, but some Tulia defendants in the courtroom bowed their heads as the verdict was read.
Coleman arrested 46 people, most of them black, in the small, mostly white farming community of Tulia. He worked alone and used no audio or video surveillance, and no drugs were ever found, but 38 defendants were convicted or reached plea deals.
Gov. Rick Perry pardoned 35 of the defendants in 2003, after an investigation into the drug cases was launched amid charges they were racially motivated. It was during the investigation that Coleman made his false statement in court.
Last year, 45 of those arrested split a $6 million settlement of a civil rights lawsuit against Coleman and the 26 counties and three cities involved with the drug task force for which he worked.
One former Tulia defendant, Kizzie White, criticized the verdict.
"I feel like the prosecutor, he had the proof of evidence that he was guilty on both counts, but yet they acquitted him on the theft," said White, 27, who spent four years in prison before her 2003 release. "Really, I don't understand it."
The perjury charges stemmed from Coleman's testimony in hearings for former Tulia defendants, during which he was questioned about an arrest for allegedly using a government-issued gasoline card to fill his personal vehicle while he was working as a Cochran County deputy.
The theft charge was dropped after Coleman paid restitution, according to testimony.
In closing arguments Friday, a defense attorney said the case was merely a smear campaign against Coleman while a prosecutor branded the defendant a "100 percent" liar.
"It's a smear campaign to bring everything the government thinks Tom Coleman did in a negative way, because they want you to hate Tom Coleman so much that all you can do is find him guilty," attorney Kirk Lectenberger said.
Lectenberger indicated Coleman perhaps became flustered when giving his testimony.
"He probably made a mistake; we all do," Lectenberger said.
Prosecutor Rod Hobson reminded jurors about the evidence, including a waiver of arraignment showing Coleman knew he faced theft charges before August 1998.
Hobson also reminded jurors of gas records that he says prove Coleman stole gas. He also said Coleman embodies the adage about a tangled web woven through deception.
"If I haven't persuaded you that there's lie upon lie, then
I haven't done a very good job," he said. "He lies when
the truth would serve him better."
See also:
"Gypsy
Cop" in Wikipedia
Byrne
task forces not just a Texas problem,
Byrne
grant pays to prosecute Tom Coleman,
Local
Officials Miss Boat on Byrne Funding,
Jury:
DPS Promoted Cronies To Oversee Drug Task Forces,
TX
House Committee: End Drug Task Force System!
GritsForBreakFast: Tom Coleman built cases and made arrests for 18 months in the late 1990s as part of a drug task force. Those convicted of selling small amounts of cocaine and received sentences of up to 90 years, and many served up to four years before they were pardoned.
On coleman's uncorroborated word 16% of the black population in that small West Texas town was incarcerated. All the defendants were pardoned by the Governor after Judge Ron Chapman halted testimony and declared that "Tom Coleman is simply not a credible witness under oath."
It's gonna be a big deal. Seventeen state and national media outlets have requested credentials from the court so far.
Officer Thomas Coleman on trial in Lubbock University Daily
Tulia scandal goes on trial Washington Times
A two-bit crime in a half-bit town
This is the fourth installment of Rev. Alan Bean's series
guest blogging for Grits from the Tom Coleman perjury trial.
The
last time Joe Moore saw Marvin Marshall the "hanging judge"
was dying of cancer, or so it seemed at the time. But Marshall
didn’t die. Like many judges who find themselves in poor
health or facing retirement, Marshall got himself appointed as
a visiting judge. David Gleason, the judge in Coleman’s perjury
trial, is a visiting judge as is Ron Chapman, the Dallas judge
who presided over Tulia evidentiary hearings in the spring of
2003.
Marvin Marshall recently resigned from the visiting judge program to join Tom Coleman’s crack legal team. But why? Did some well healed Tom Coleman advocate make attorneys like Marvin Marshall, John Read and Kirk Lechtenberger an offer they couldn’t refuse? Or do these men believe that a grave injustice is being inflicted on their client? Tom Coleman isn’t picking up the tab. As John Read bragged to the media shortly after taking on this case, "Tom Coleman couldn’t afford me in two life times."
I’m glad Tom Coleman has first class legal assistance. I wish John Read or Rod Hobson could have represented Joe Moore in December of 1999. Joe’s trial would certainly have lasted longer than a single day. Joe might even have been acquitted. He certainly wouldn’t have received a ninety-year sentence.
Instead, Joe was defended by Kregg, Hukill, a court appointed attorney from a town even smaller than Tulia. Hukill advised Joe to accept the twenty-five year plea bargain Terry McEachern had so graciously offered.
"I’d be dead by then," Joe replied, "I ain’t takin’ time for something I didn’t do."
"But Joe," the sympathetic attorney implored, "a jury could give you ninety years."
"Then you tell ‘em to crank it up!" the big hog farmer spat back. Relaying this story a few weeks ago Joe shook his head slowly and said, "Man, did they crank it up!"
Tom Coleman stands accused of committing a two-bit crime in a half-bit town. Cochran County Attorney J. C. Adams drew a little blackboard diagram for us on this afternoon. Mr. Adams office is located on the south side of Washington Street in tiny Morton, Texas. I had no trouble picturing the scene because I tried to talk to Adams over a year ago. "I’m through with this Coleman thing," he told me. "Do you realize how many of my kid’s ball games I’ve missed driving up to Tulia, only to be told that my testimony wasn’t needed after all? I don’t ever want to hear Coleman’s name again."
But there he was on the afternoon of January 11, 2005 (my fifty-second birthday, incidentally) sketching out the fatal scene on a chalkboard. Eight years have elapsed since the deal went down in Morton, Texas and this was J.C. Adams’ first chance to relate the chilling details in open court.
As Adams motored west on Washington street past the Wallace Oil Outlet he spied an ordinary man clad in "standard country and western wear" pulling a gas pump out of a "primer grey" truck. "Without a shadow of a doubt it was Tom Coleman," no more than twelve paces away. That pump, Adams told us, was for county vehicles only.
Two weeks later, Chief Deputy Raymond Weber told Adams that on two occasions Deputy Coleman had purchased far more fuel than his county vehicle could hold.
That’s what you call a two-bit crime. And if Tom Coleman was a patient man nothing would have come of it. But after leaving Morton, Texas in the middle of a shift the gypsy cop found himself in need of a job. When prospective employers called the Cochran County Sheriff’s office in search of a character reference they were informed that Coleman had fueled his personal vehicle with county gas. No big deal, a two-bit crime to be sure, but enough to send Tom’s resume to the trash heap.
An indignant Tom Coleman called up J.C. Adams and threatened Cochran County with a lawsuit if they didn’t stop telling lies about him. With the statute of limitations winding down on Coleman’s two-bit crime an angry Adams decided to press charges. Nobody likes an ultimatum.
"So how much did [Coleman] owe," attorney Rod Hobson asked J.C. Adams, "besides the gas that he stole?"
The ugly answer was that Coleman owed almost $7,000 to fifteen different merchants. "How many merchants you got over in Morton?" Hobson asked.
"Not many more than that," Adams replied in his laconic West Texas drawl.
This afternoon Judge Ron Chapman briefly took the stand to testify that Tom Coleman lied under oath in an official proceeding. More importantly, Chapman said, these lies were material in destroying Tom Coleman’s credibility.
Having established that much, the prosecution rested its case.
The Tulia drug case has garnered international publicity; so why was so much attention being paid to penny-ante crimes and misdemeanors committed almost ten years ago in a town that makes Tulia look like a booming metropolis?
Stealing gas pales in comparison with faking drug deals. But lawyers work with what they’ve got. The statute of limitations has run on Coleman’s drug sting testimony; but the lies he told at the Tulia evidentiary hearings are still fair game.
And, as Rod Hobson is sure to remind the jury in his closing statements, a lie is a lie and a liar is a liar. The Tulia drug sting unraveled because Tom Coleman was exposed as a lying son-of-a-bitch. That impression will be reinforced, albeit in unspectacular fashion, by this week’s perjury trial.
Tom Coleman isn’t so much evil as he is pathetic. But maybe that’s the point: you don’t hire tragically compromised people to make uncorroborated drug cases. In fact, we shouldn’t be sending folks away for decades on the uncorroborated word of fallible human being. Tom Coleman is just a loose cog in a broken machine.
Joe Moore takes no pleasure in seeing his nemesis brought low. "It’s nice to be on the other side this time," he admitted today as he paused between bites of chicken fried steak. "But what good’s it gonna do to lock up old Tom Coleman when they ain’t laid a finger on Terry McEachern, Larry Stewart and all them that put that rascal on the street?"
Perhaps that’s why Marvin Marshall signed on to Coleman’s defense team: he likes the system the way it is.
This really isn’t about Coleman anymore. It’s about Texas, it’s about the war on drugs, and it’s about restoring sanity to a grotesque criminal justice system.
Will Tom Coleman become the rolling snowball that sparks an avalanche? Please Jesus, let it be so.
Alan Bean
Tulia, Texas
- posted by Gritsforbreakfast
@ 9:57 PM
TULIA SPECIAL REPORT:
Read Grits guest blogger Rev. Alan Bean's series
on the Tom Coleman perjury trial.
Coleman
trial already has pro-wrestling feel
Lesson
from Tulia: Treatment not Incarceration
John
Read's Boot Camp
A
two-bit crime in a half-bit town
