1999 Tulia drug arrests

A total of 47 individuals, the majority of whom were African American, were arrested in 1999 in Tulia, Texas on charges of cocaine dealing as a result of an undercover operation carried out by agent Tom Coleman. Coleman's testimony was crucial in the convictions of 38 of the 47. Years later, 35 of the 38 incarcerated were pardoned by Texas governor Rick Perry.

What ensued was a media frenzy that was widely covered by national media outlets such as The New York Times, 60 Minutes, People, and A&E Networks.

Pretense
In 1994, as part of the United States' war on drugs, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The first draft of the congressional bill was written by then-Senator Joe Biden of Delaware in cooperation with the National Association of Police Organizations, and was sponsored by U.S. Representative Jack Brooks of Texas.

Nationwide, states received 100,000 new police officers, US$9.7 billion in funding for prisons, and 6.1 billion dollars in funding for prevention programs. In Tulia, and small towns alike, task forces received funding for each arrest and conviction they made, which could be used as they pleased the following year.

Undercover operation
Using the alias T. J. Dawson, Agent Tom Coleman went undercover for eighteen months, posing as a buyer who needed to purchase cocaine for his girlfriend. Coleman worked for the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force. He was hired by Sheriff Larry Stewart of Swisher County, Texas in 1998, operating out of Amarillo.

On the morning of July 23, 1999, the Swisher County Sheriff's Department, in cooperation with local authorities, conducted a collective apprehension and arrest of 47 citizens in Tulia Texas. 38 of the arrested were African American, which amounted to approximately 10 to 20 percent of Tulia's African American population.

After the highly publicized drug arrests in Tulia, Officer Coleman was honored as Officer of the Year in Texas. He was photographed with John Cornyn, who was then the Texas Attorney General and later a U.S. Senator.

Convictions
During his undercover operation in Tulia, Tom Coleman claimed to have purchased at least 117 illegal narcotics from 47 different defendants. Except for 21 defendants who were charged with the first-degree felony of with selling drugs to Coleman within 1000 ft of a school or park, all other defendants were charged with second-degree felonies for the purchases made between February 1998 and July 1999.

This was in spite of Coleman not supplying any recorded materials, such as audio or videotape, or corroboration by second officers. There were also no drugs or weapons found in the initial raid. Coleman frequently wrote brief reports that included very little information about the defendants. He also identified suspects incorrectly in a few instances, resulting in dismissal of cases.

Pardons
Sparked by a letter written by Gary Gardner, who was distraught by the lack of evidence, to District Judge Ed Self, Amarillo civil rights attorney Jeff Blackburn began investigating the Tulia defendants' cases, along with Vanita Gupta from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a handful of attorneys from firms around the country. Eventually, the case became a cause célèbre, and money was raised to legally challenge the cases. Many had already served several years in prison before this process gained momentum. By 2004, Blackburn and his team had freed most of the accused and a US$6 million collective settlement was reached to avoid further litigation in civil court.

Of the 47 original defendants, Texas governor Rick Perry pardoned 35 of them. Nine of the twelve defendants who were still on this list either had their charges dropped before they went to trial or were put on deferred adjudication, meaning that they were not found guilty in the end. Since the tenth defendant was underage when he committed the offense, the conviction was not recorded on his adult record. When the two remaining were apprehended in the Coleman sting, they were already on probation for a different offense; this probation was canceled, and they were sent to jail. The Coleman charges never resulted in their conviction.

Accused
The names of the defendants, their race, age at the time of arrest, and whether they were pardoned are shown below.

Conviction of Tom Coleman
In 2003, the state appointed two prosecutors to hold evidentiary hearings to determine if Coleman's testimony was the sole basis for conviction, and to find out if county officials withheld information from the defense.

On Friday, January 14, 2005, Coleman was convicted of perjury in the separate evidentiary hearing trial, not related to the original 47 defendants that he testified against. During the five-day trial held in Lubbock, Texas, one of the three counts was dropped, leaving two alleged instances of perjury. He was acquitted on one count and found guilty on the second count. Coleman was sentenced to 10 years probation with a US$7,500 fine. The 7th Court of Appeals of Texas in 2006 upheld the conviction.

Coleman could not be prosecuted for his testimony given during the trials of the drug defendants because the statute of limitations had expired.

Drug Law Enforcement Evidentiary Standards Improvement Act of 2007
In the aftermath of the Tulia drug sting, the Drug Law Enforcement Evidentiary Standards Improvement Act of 2007 was twice introduced in the United States Congress, but not passed. It aimed to increase the evidentiary standard required to convict a person for a drug offense and to require screening of law enforcement officers or others acting under color of law participating in drug task forces.

Media
The story was widely covered by national media outlets such as 60 Minutes, and The New York Times.

"'...Coleman's methods [of law-enforcement] were the subject of investigative reports in dozens of media outlets, from the New York Times, to Court TV, to the Independent of London...'"

The first newspaper article that was published about the arrests was by Michael Garrett of the Tulia Sentinel titled "Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage". It was three years before the story went national.

Starting in 2002, Bob Herbert, a journalist for The New York Times, wrote eleven op-ed articles that played a significant role in spreading the Tulia story across the United States. He wrote articles such as "Kafka in Tulia" which exposed the racism that occurred in the community, and "Tulia's Shattered Lives" which depicted how the arrest affected the lives of the incarcerated.

The book Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town by Nate Blakeslee was to be adapted into a film directed by John Singleton starring Billy Bob Thornton. Halle Berry was cast to play a lawyer in a film. Berry was to play an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The movie was never completed.

Books

 * Blakeslee, Nate, Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, PublicAffairs, 2005. ISBN 978-1-58648-219-0
 * Bean, Alan, Taking Out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, Advanced Concept Design, 2010. ISBN 978-0-98261-620-8