Politics: More Justice for Tulia

If the story of Tulia, Texas has escaped your radar, it's an interesting one. A one-man drug task force, in the form of the wildly unreliable freelance policeman named Thomas Coleman, had rounded up nearly a tenth of the black population of Tulia using mostly trumped up evidence, shoddy note-taking (Coleman famously scribbled descriptions and information in marker on his bare leg) and a big old pile of hearsay. Interestingly, very little cash and almost no drugs were seized in his so-called investigation.

Last month, a judge overturned all of the convictions stemming from his efforts, and yesterday, a grand jury in Swisher County, Texas, indicted Coleman for perjury. The three perjury counts are based on a different investigation, but it appears that the Swisher County DA isn't done with Coleman yet.

If you've had a chance to read any of the Tulia columns by Bob Herbert (also of the New York Times), you'll know about the case. Herbert did an excellent job of raising the Justice for Tulia banner, especially noting that many African-Americans in the town pled guilty (those pleas were also tossed out) rather than face a jury, even though they all held that the charges were false.