Tulia

Pardon for 35 Arrested in '99
Case in Texas Largely Made by Agent Indicted Now for Perjury

ADAM LIPTAK / NY Times / in SF Chronicle 23aug03

[Several articles below, including an editorial by Hugh B. Price, President of the National Urban League]

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas on Friday pardoned 35 people, 31 of them black, who were arrested in 1999 in a drug sting and convicted based solely on the word of an undercover agent who has since been indicted for perjury.

Thomas Coleman, a white, former
undercover police officer here whose
uncorroborated testimony supported
drug charges against 46 people, almost
all of them black. They represented
more than 10 percent of the small
African-American population of this
town of 5,000.

"Questions surrounding testimony from the key witness in these cases," the governor said, referring to the agent, Tom Coleman, "weighed heavily on my final decision."

The arrests in Tulia, a dusty little town of 5,000 people between Amarillo and Lubbock in the Texas panhandle, attracted national attention because they decimated the small black community there.

Freddie Brookins Jr., 26, served 3'h years of a 20-year sentence. He has been free since June, when Perry signed legislation allowing the 14 people then still in prison to be released on bail while he and the courts considered their cases. "It really takes a lot off your mind," Brookins said of the pardon.

But there was bitterness mixed with his relief.

"What hurt the most was that the people in the courtroom and on the jury knew me and knew I hadn't done it," he said. "All of it had to do with race. It's a stupid way to try to get people out of town."

Kizzie White, who served four years of a 25-year sentence before being released in June, said of the pardon, "It's wonderful to be free."

Expressing hope for Tulia's future, she said, "I pray that everyone can come together and put this behind us."

Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer in Amarillo who represents many of the people pardoned on Friday, 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," he 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."

Task force officials did not respond to messages seeking comment.

At a hearing in Tulia in March, Coleman, who is white, and other witnesses testified about his troubled law enforcement career, unorthodox methods, pervasive errors, combustible temperament and apparent racism. Coleman blithely conceded that he made routine use of the most charged racial slur.

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 accompany him, 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.

Among the people arrested in 1999 but not pardoned on Friday were seven whose cases had been dismissed before trial, two who were on probation at the time of their arrests and so not eligible for pardons, one whose conviction is not final and one who has died.

Coleman pleaded not guilty to perjury charges in April. His phone is disconnected, and his lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court for criminal matters, is considering a recommendation from the judge who supervised the March hearing that all of the Tulia convictions be overturned. It is not clear what impact the pardons will have on those proceedings.

The pardons will, however, open the way for civil suits by those charged in the cases.

The first civil suit arising from the Tulia arrests was, apparently coincidentally, filed on Friday in federal court in Amarillo. It was brought by Tonya White and Zuri Bossett, against whom charges were brought and then dropped before trial, as Coleman's evidence started to unravel.

The suit says that the people and agencies responsible for Coleman's supervision violated the plaintiffs' civil rights by sending him into the field and trusting his information when there was plenty of evidence that he was unreliable.

The 1997 background check on Coleman conducted by the task force revealed, the suit says, that his boss in an earlier law enforcement job said Coleman had disciplinary and "possible mental problems" and that one of his references said he "needed constant supervision, had a bad temper and would tend to run to his mother for help."

A more diligent check would have revealed, the suit adds, that Coleman had stolen gas and run up bad debts in another law enforcement job before leaving town abruptly in the middle of a shift. His boss there had told the Texas agency that licenses peace officers that Coleman "should not be in law enforcement."

Eight months into the undercover investigation, Coleman's supervisors received a warrant calling for his arrest for stealing gasoline. They arrested him, let him out on bond and allowed him to make restitution for the gas and other debts of $7,000. The undercover investigation then continued.

Texas Governor Pardons 35 Arrested in Tainted Sting

ADAM LIPTAK / NY Times 23aug03

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas yesterday pardoned 35 people, 31 of them black, who were arrested in 1999 in a drug sting based solely on the word of an undercover agent who has since been indicted on perjury charges.

"Questions surrounding testimony from the key witness in these cases," the governor said, referring to the agent, Tom Coleman, "weighed heavily on my final decision."

The arrests in Tulia, a dusty small town of 5,000 people in the Texas Panhandle between Amarillo and Lubbock, attracted national attention because they decimated the small black community there.

Freddie Brookins Jr., 26, served 3 1/2 years of a 20-year sentence. He has been free since June, when Governor Perry, a Republican, signed legislation allowing the 14 people then still in prison to be released on bail while he and the courts considered their cases.

"It really takes a lot off your mind," Mr. Brookins said of the pardon.

But there was bitterness mixed with his relief.

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."

Task force officials did not respond to messages seeking comment.

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.

Among the people arrested in 1999 but not pardoned yesterday were seven whose cases had been dismissed before trial, two who were on probation at the time of their arrests and so not eligible for pardons, one whose conviction is not final and one who has died.

Mr. Coleman pleaded not guilty to perjury charges in April. His phone is disconnected, and his lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.

"We're planning on exhausting every single remedy available to our clients," said Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents many of the Tulia defendants.

The first civil suit arising from the Tulia arrests was, apparently coincidentally, filed yesterday in federal court in Amarillo. It was brought by two women against whom charges were brought and then dropped before trial, as Mr. Coleman's evidence started to unravel.

The suit says that the people and agencies responsible for Mr. Coleman's supervision violated the plaintiffs' civil rights by sending him into the field and trusting his information when there was plenty of evidence that he was unreliable. The suit seeks unspecified damages and a court order prohibiting more drug stings singling out blacks in Tulia.

One plaintiff, Tonya White, was lucky. She had, according to court records, an unbeatable alibi. On the day Mr. Coleman said she sold him cocaine in Tulia, she was more than 300 miles away, in Oklahoma City. She had visited a bank there at almost the precise time of the supposed drug deal, and she had a time-stamped check to prove it.

Many of the defendants have agreed to a settlement of $250,000 in exchange for an agreement not to sue local officials. But they remain free to sue the task force.

Ms. White and the other plaintiff in the suit filed yesterday, Zuri Bossett, were not part of that deal, and they have sued a broad range of defendants, including Mr. Coleman.

Kizzie White, who served four years of a 25-year sentence before being released in June, described her reaction to being pardoned.

"Today is just a wonderful day," Ms. White said. "It's wonderful to be free."

She expressed hope for Tulia's future. "I'm just glad that justice was done," she said, "and I pray that everyone can come together and put this behind us."

To Be Equal

HUGH B PRICE / Editorial / The Call (Kansas City, MO) 4apr03

On Trial: America’s Criminal Justice System

Hugh B. Price is President of the National Urban League

NEW YORK—For several years in the 1990s, a tightly knit gang of African-American drug dealers transformed Tulia, Texas, a small town of 5,000 halfway between Amarillo and Lubbock, into one of America’s best organized and most lucrative drug trafficking capitals.

Now, most of these black drug dealers belonged to families who had lived in Tulia’s small black community for decades, and they seemed to be as bereft of money and as modest and sober in their habits as anyone in town that is often described as "dirt poor."

But this clever disguise didn’t for one minute fool one Thomas Coleman, a white law officer hired by the regional narcotics task force and the Tulia sheriff’s department to go undercover and root out drug trafficking.

In 1999, Coleman gave his superiors something to crow aboutthe arrest of 46 people on substantial drug trafficking charges. Most of those arrested were African-Americans. They made up nearly a 10th of Tulia’s black population. The few whites arrested were friends of blacks.

Trials were soon organized, with Coleman the sole witness against the defendants. Convictions quickly followed, and the sentences were harsh: 60 years for this defendant, 90 years for that defendant, 434 years for still another defendant. Other defendants, fearful of being sentenced to decades in prison, plead guilty and received short but still substantial time.

Justice had been served, the local prosecutor’s office maintains to this day, even though:

No drugs were ever found.
No money that could be even remotely tied to the drug trafficking was ever found.
No weapons of the kind routinely used by drug traffickers was ever found.

All prosecutors had was the word of Thomas Coleman, a man as I wrote in the column about this case last September, with a distinctly checkered legal past and a well-know penchant for publicly referring to any African-American as "n_ _ _ _r" because he declared the word was no longer "as profane" as it once was.

Some of those Coleman had accused escaped this travesty of justice because they could prove, via a cashed check in one case, and employee time sheets and an employer’s testimony in another, that they were innocent of Coleman’s claims.

Still, another man arrested and charged was let go when he pointed out that he could not possibly be the tall black man with "bushy type hair" Coleman had said he was since, as could plainly be seen, he was short and balding.

But most of the other defendants had no such airtight protection against what Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist who wrote about the case, described as "the nightmarish blend of incompetence and malevolence."

Now, thanks to publicity and the legal aid provided by the defendants by private attorneys in Texas and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational fund, the legal system in Texas has a chance to reconsider and reverse the wrong done by Thomas Coleman and his overzealous handlers. A hearing has begun in Tulia to determine whether four black men convicted on Coleman’s testimony should be freed because his testimony was false.

The accounts in news reports of Coleman’s own descriptions of his undercover methods would make this case a farce if the lives of individuals and families weren’t at stake.

According to the New York Times’ reports, Coleman said he worked alone and never tape recorded his supposed drug deals. Instead, when he brought drugs, he would "put them in my sock, and write down the time and the date, and if I had a street name, first name, subject in a green pick-up truck, whatever I had because I didn’t know none of these people.

He wrote, he said, all of this on his leg.

The hearing has already had four law officials who had some previous experience working with Coleman tell the court under oath such things as "I do not believe Tom Coleman is an honest individual," and "You just couldn’t depend on what he told you."

The real question is why the prosecutor’s office in Tulia, Texas, ever thought and still thinks it should.

The wrong law officials in Tulia, Texas, committed against law abiding black citizens and some of their white friends is but another piece of the growing evidence that America’s criminal justice system is riven with serious flaws.

Racial bias among police officers, prosecutors, juries and judges; toleration of poorly-prepared defense attorneys for indigent defendants; state legislatures’ cynical decisions to build prisons in rural white communities in order to provide jobs and infusions of state funds to ease those areas’ economic depressions, not fight crime, are just a few of the problems that deserve attention.

First and foremost, of course, there is the wrong of the death penalty, in which the accumulating instances of questionable convictions proved to have been wrong that is, of men who were innocent of the crime for which they were charged and convicted cry out for a national moratorium on the death penalty.

These issues are more than matters of legal precedent and process. They go to the heart of what Americans declare freedom and democracy involves and provides for individual human beings.

We should remember that as the declarations resound about American fighting for freedom and democracy in foreign lands, the fight for freedom and democracy in this land, too, is still being waged in places like Tulia, Texas.

source: http://www.kccall.com/News/2003/0404/Editorial/034.html 31aug03

Former Undercover Detective Uncertain in Tulia Cases

ADAM LIPTAK / NY Times 20mar03

TULIA, Texas - Visitors to this small, poor community in the Texas panhandle, halfway between Amarillo and Lubbock, see a sign as they enter town. "The richest land and the finest people," it says.

The first proposition is plainly false. The second has been tested this week, as witness after witness testified to shortcomings in the character and methods of Thomas Coleman, a white, former undercover police officer here whose uncorroborated testimony supported drug charges against 46 people, almost all of them black. They represented more than 10 percent of the small African-American population of this town of 5,000.

Coleman took the stand to defend himself on Thursday, in a hearing to collect evidence for a challenge filed by four men serving terms of 20 to 90 years who are seeking to overturn their convictions.

Coleman admitted that "there were some mess-ups" in four other cases involving misidentifications and false reports that resulted in dismissals. And he expressed less than total certainty that the 22 people who remained in prison based on his testimony were all guilty.

Mitchell E. Zamoff, a lawyer with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, which is representing Christopher Jackson, one of the inmates, challenged Coleman with tenacious, staccato questions.

"But for your word, there is really no evidence that any of these alleged buys took place?" Zamoff asked.

"Yes," said Coleman.

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

"You're not sure if everyone you locked up deserves to be in jail?" Zamoff asked.

"I'm pretty sure," Coleman said.

Coleman, dressed in a black leather jacket, was a talkative and animated witness. He gesticulated and gave long, seemingly stream-of-consciousness responses.

About 100 people, perhaps two-thirds of them black, came to see him testify. They murmured and chuckled at the testimony, giving the courtroom the feel of a low-decibel revival meeting.

One prosecutor, Mark Hocker, asked Judge Ron Chapman to admonish the audience.

"This is a courtroom and not a church," Hocker said, "and we don't need amens shouted out."

The judge complied.

Much of the audience's amusement was directed at Coleman's uncertainty in testifying on Thursday, in contrast to his confidence during the original trials in late 1999 and 2000.

In response to a question about his having quit a job as a jailer in 1995 to avoid being served with a restraining notice from his ex-wife, he qualified his answers.

"I'm not even sure I'm telling you accurate," he said.

About another answer, he said, "Don't hold this to a T."

Sometimes he appeared evasive.

"Is there anything you weren't honest about?" Zamoff asked, referring to a job application.

"I don't know," Coleman responded. "Do you have the application?"

Coleman conceded that he had left a trail of bad debts after he resigned without notice from two earlier law enforcement positions, that he once owned an illegal machine gun with an obliterated serial number and that he has been subject to a court order to pay delinquent child support.

The four men challenging their convictions, all black, were arrested in a mass sweep in July 1999 and tried about six months later. They have exhausted their direct appeals but are asking the Texas courts to free them nonetheless, on the theory that their prosecutions were racially biased and that prosecutors failed to turn over important information about Coleman to their lawyers.

The men, Jason Williams, Freddie Brookins Jr., Joseph Moore and Jackson, watched intently from the jury box. They have worn leg shackles throughout the proceedings.

At the conclusion of the hearings, which are expected to continue at least another day, Chapman will make a recommendation to an appeals court as to whether the four should would receive new trials.

Coleman was at a loss on Thursday to explain discrepancies between time sheets he filled out and certified as true and the dates of some of the drug transactions.

"That shouldn't be possible, should it?" Zamoff asked.

"Nope," said Coleman.

In testimony Thursday morning, Sheriff Larry Stewart, who hired Coleman in January 1998, said he had made only limited inquiries about Coleman's background before doing so. He said he asked even fewer questions that summer, when he arrested Coleman on theft and abuse of office charges filed by another sheriff for whom Coleman had worked. Coleman was accused of stealing gasoline from the county for his personal use.

On Thursday, Coleman called those charges "bogus." But he ultimately paid for the gas and repaid about $7,000 in debts to various merchants in exchange for dismissal of the criminal charges. Lawyers for the inmates argued that the repayments amounted to an acknowledgment of guilt that warranted firing Coleman long before Tulia's black population was literally decimated by the arrests. They also maintained that defense lawyers should have been told about the charges.

Stewart testified that he had asked state authorities to seal Coleman's personnel file to protect his safety in the undercover operation.

Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents two of the inmates, said the hearings had helped explain Coleman's motives.

"The Tulia drug stings transformed Tom Coleman from a zero to a hero," Gupta said. "He came into this and he couldn't get a law enforcement job and he left this as Lawman of the Year." The reference was to an award Coleman received from the state in 1999, not long after the arrests. "He had to make drug cases however he could," she said.

John Nation, a special prosecutor brought in to handle the four cases, acknowledged that Coleman "had a lot of baggage and he is certainly controversial." But, Nation said, Coleman "was a good and competent narcotics officer during the time he worked in Swisher County." Tulia is the county seat.

Mattie White leaned forward and listened hard as Coleman testified. Four of her children were arrested on Coleman's word. One of the cases, against Tonya White, unraveled when she was able to prove, through bank records, that she was in Oklahoma when Coleman said he bought cocaine from her. Her three other children were sentenced to 14, 25 and 60 years.

Asked what the hearings meant to her, she said, "The truth is coming out."

Michelle Williams, a 34-year-old mother of four, was released from prison in November, after serving three years of an eight-year sentence for selling cocaine to Coleman, whom she said she had never met before her arrest. She said the hearing here had stirred up emotions she has tried to overcome.

"I hated the guy," she said. "In prison, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and it went away. But now the anger is coming back."

Williams, who works in a factory that makes tortillas, was asked what the hearings might accomplish.

"That everybody can come home and put their lives back together," she answered. "We never had any problem in Tulia until this crook came in."

Texas Cases Challenged Over Officer's Testimony

ADAM LIPTAK / NY Times 18mar03

TULIA, Tex., March 17It has been some time since people here have had a good look at Thomas Coleman, the former undercover police officer whose uncorroborated testimony was all that supported a drug sweep in which more than a tenth of this small town's black population was arrested.

On the morning of July 23, 1999, Mr. Coleman wore a ski mask as the people he said he had bought drugs from were arrested in their nightclothes, in front of television cameras. The trials that followed were brief and businesslike, and after the initial sentences were handed down60 years, 99 years, 434 yearspeople started to plead guilty to shorter but still substantial sentences without a chance to confront their accuser.

This week, Tulia will reacquaint itself with Mr. Coleman, now 43, in a hearing to determine whether four black men convicted on his say-so should be freed because his testimony had been false. It may be the first of many such hearings; his reports in several cases have proved false and his character and credibility have been harshly questioned by former law enforcement colleagues.

The arrests and convictions in Tulia have become, for many, a symbol of racial injustice. They have brought national attention to the way law enforcement deals with poor minorities, against a backdrop so desolate that the issues have been presented with pristine clarity. John Nations, a state prosecutor brought in to handle the four cases, was adamant in his opening statement today that the original prosecutor, Terry D. McEachern, and other officials had done nothing wrong.

Mr. Nations said the inmates, who are serving sentences of 20 to 90 years, cannot meet the difficult legal requirements to overturn criminal convictions after appeals have been exhausted.

"These defendants one and all were guilty exactly as charged," Mr. Nations said. He added, "This is not a trial of Tom Coleman."

But it seems to be. The proceedings started with lawyers for the jailed residents calling a parade of law enforcement officials who testified to Mr. Coleman's poor character and odd conduct.

Ori White, the district attorney for Pecos County, who had litigated a divorce case against Mr. Coleman while in private practice, said, "I do not believe Tom Coleman is an honest individual." Mr. White said Mr. Coleman owned an illegal machine gun and that he so feared for his safety in the divorce case that he wore a bulletproof vest to court.

Bruce Wilson, who was the sheriff of Pecos County for 16 years and for 5 years in the early 1990's was Mr. Coleman's boss said, "You just couldn't depend on what he told you."

Juan Castro, the police chief of Fort Stockton, said Mr. Coleman was "a paranoid gun nut." Samuel Esparza, an investigator for the police department there, testified that Mr. Coleman was a racist.

Mr. Coleman, who is now a private investigator, was not present today, has an unlisted phone number and could not be reached for comment. He is expected to testify on Wednesday.

The four defendantsChristopher Jackson; Freddie Brookins Jr.; Jason Williams; and Joseph Mooresat in the jury box today, which seemed apt to many of the 50 spectators, about evenly divided between blacks and whites. There was general amusement as the more than a dozen defense lawyers who had arrived from Amarillo, New York and Washington to present their cases jammed into the small courtroom.

"There's a hope now," said Freddie Brookins Sr., 49, who cuts up cattle carcasses for a living. His son has been in prison for four years.

His son's case is one of those under consideration this week by Ron Chapman, an appeals court judge from Dallas who replaced the judge who oversaw most of the trials. That judge, Edward L. Self, recused himself because he had expressed support for the prosecution after the trials.

The older Mr. Brookins recalled the advice he had given his son.

"I asked him, did he do it?" Mr. Brookins said. "He said no. And I said, if it was me and I didn't do it and they had to give me 100 years, you would give me 100 years" rather than accept a plea bargain for a shorter sentence. Judge Self sentenced the younger Mr. Brookins to 20 years. About 5,000 people live in this dirt-poor town halfway between Amarillo and Lubbock, perhaps 400 of them black. Tulia subsists on, as Sheriff Larry Stewart put it, "a little bit of wheat, some cotton, some cattle." It seems a particularly unlikely haven for large-scale drug trafficking.

Before the arrests, which literally decimated the black population, "people got along here pretty good," said Thelma Johnson, 57, a cook, whose nephew Dennis Allen is serving 18 years. "It was a calm kind of segregation."

That has changed, she said. "It seems to have become a black and white thing since the drug sting."

In the end, 22 people were sentenced to prison, and 13 are still there. Many others were sentenced to probation.

Mr. Coleman's work was supervised and paid for by the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task Force, which was financed by the federal government. Sheriff Stewart said that Mr. Coleman was the first undercover agent he had ever hired.

Mr. Coleman, who was named the state's Lawman of the Year in 1999, used unorthodox methods. He worked alone and did not tape record his drug buys. No drugs, weapons or large sums of cash were found in the arrests among the network of drug traffickers Mr. Coleman said he had identified.

He described his methods in a 2001 deposition in a civil rights case brought by one of the defendants in the sweeps, which the county later settled for an undisclosed sum.

When he bought drugs, Mr. Coleman said, "I would put them in my sock, and write down the time and the date, and if I had a street name, first name, subject in a green pickup, whatever I hadbecause I didn't know none of these people." Whatever he had to go on, he said, "I wrote on my leg."

Mr. Coleman was less than categorical when asked in the civil case whether he stood by the truthfulness of his earlier testimony.

"That can be questionable," he said in his deposition. "I mean, I have read over my testimony, and some of that stuff in there is, like, totally out in left field."

Lawyers for the defendants say there is a name for that patch of field. They call it perjury.

By last year, several of Mr. Coleman's cases had unraveled before they reached a jury, and charges were dismissed. Tonya White was able to find bank records to show that she was in Oklahoma when Mr. Coleman swore he had bought drugs from her in Tulia. Billy Wafer produced timecards showing he had been at work when Mr. Coleman said he had been selling drugs. Yul Bryant defended himself by pointing out that he could not be the tall black man "with bushy type hair" described in Mr. Coleman's report. Mr. Bryant based this on the fact that he is short and balding.

Judge Chapman, using phrasing reminiscent of the Watergate scandal, told the lawyers what he wanted to accomplish this week. He said he wanted to establish what prosecutors knew and when they knew it.

What is clear is that by the summer of 1998, a year before the mass arrests, an arrest warrant for Mr. Coleman arrived from Cochran County, where he had worked as a deputy. It said Mr. Coleman was wanted on charges of stealing county gasoline for personal use.

Sheriff Stewart promptly arrested his own undercover officer, bonded him out on his own recognizance and told him to take a week's vacation. Soon after, he took Mr. Coleman's word that everything had been set right. The case was dismissed after Mr. Coleman made restitution of $7,000.

Juries did not hear about Mr. Coleman's own troubles with the law.

In his deposition, Mr. Coleman said he was merely a gun enthusiast. He testified that he bought and traded guns and kept a small armory at home, "just like," he said, "a regular, normal human being, Texan." And in the deposition, Mr. Coleman for a moment turned philosophical.

"You know," he said, "in life you may have to burn some bridges, but you don't burn them all the way down. You know, you might have to cross that bridge one day again."

Here in Tulia, as Mr. Coleman prepares to recross a bridge that spans many lives, people say it will not be any easy journey.

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