Reminders & Tulia Notes and Plan

Reminders: At last check, several people still have not posted their comment on "A Hard Straight." Remember, the deadline for that is this coming Friday, Dec. 11th.
We probably won't have much time tomorrow for the families to confer about final exam questions. Nonetheless, you should be making up some questions individually. The families will have some time in class on Thursday (12/10), our last class, to determine which four questions you want to submit. AGAIN, THE DEADLINE FOR THAT IS FRIDAY, DEC. 11TH AT NOON. I have read most of the in-class essays you wrote last Thursday and should be able to hand them back in class tomorrow, 12/8. Finally, continue reading "Tulia," which you should be finishing this week.
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TULIA NOTES AND PLAN: I am going to post some lecture notes below, but let me first lay out a "game plan," of sorts, for how we will cover the rest of this book this week. First, tomorrow (Tues., 12/8) I will be showing a documentary on Tulia. It runs about 55 minutes. It was done as this case was unfolding and you will hear from many of the characters, with two notable exceptions: Vanita Gupta, and Terry McEachern. One way of getting a handle on this book is to try to remember the cast of characters and the parts they played in this story. I have pared down my notes considerably, so that on Thursday I should be able to get to the end of the book. Below are some things I planned to talk about tomorrow.

LECTURE NOTES: We left off last Tuesday, 12/1, about to get into Chapter Four, The Mayor of Vigo.

A. Gary Gardner (the informal mayor of Vigo), bankrupt farmer, was in the midst of fighting s school board decision to institute a drug testing program, which his son refused to participate in (a case which he won, by the way). When he heard of the big drug bust in Tulia, he began saving articles and any other information relevant to the case.

B. He was especially troubled by the biased press coverage -- in the Tulia Herald the headline read: "Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage." He was also troubled by statements from the sheriff and district attorney, both of whom talked about the accused as if they were guilty. Gardner felt, in particular, that Sheriff Stewart applied the law too rigidly.

C. The author goes into Gardner's background. But most significantly, Gardner made a decision to draft a letter to the Tulia defendants (based on his new-found legal expertise), which he did not send right away, but he eventually did after he got a call from someone he had helped years ago. That letter actually contained two very sound pieces of legal advice: (1) he urged them to seek a change of venue (i.e., move the case out of Swisher Co.) and (2) he strongly suggested they investigate Tom Coleman's background.

Part Two

Chapter Five: "Deep Cover"

A. Other attorneys representing other defendants from the Tulia bust were surprised at the flimsy case the prosecution presented to get Joe Moore convicted and sentenced to 90 years.

B. Blakeslee focuses on one attorney in particular, Paul Holloway. He had a reputation for doing exhaustive pretrial preparations and he refused to play the standard plea-bargain game for indigent defendants.

1. In Texas, fees for indigent lawyers (or public defenders) were capped at $400, with only an additional $500 for investigative purposes, which is grossly inadequate and creates a strong incentive to plea bargain. (To give you some idea how inadequate those caps are: it is not unusual for an attorney to charge $100 AN HOUR for his services, and in terms of investigation, for example, ordering a DNA test in a case costs THOUSANDS.)

C. Holloway was troubled by the police reports on the cases which provided little detail and no corroborating evidence, which McEachern excused in the case of Coleman because he was supposedly operating "deep cover." Holloway went on to discover some of Coleman's checkered past, perhaps most significantly that Sheriff Stewart HAD ACTUALLY ARRESTED HIM IN RESPONSE TO AN ARREST WARRANT, WHILE HE WAS UNDERCOVER. McEachern had NOT informed the defense of this. But when Holloway approached Judge Self with such information, Judge Self refused to throw the cases out and McEachern successfully blocked the defense from presenting this to the jury.


Chapter Six: Officer of the Year

A. Holloway decides to do some further digging in Coleman's background by contacting his ex-wife Carol Barnett, and she gave him an earful, including the revelation that she was afraid of him.

B. Blakeslee goes on to talk about Coleman's dad who was a Texas Ranger. Coleman wanted to follow in his footsteps, but he got in trouble in school, dropped out in the 11th grade. His dad pulled some strings to get him a job as a prison guard and deputy, but he was not highly motivated and he was inattentive on the job. And this is not to mention his problems with debt, his divorce, etc.

C. It is in this chapter that Blakeslee desribes how McEachern successfully blocked efforts to get this information about Coleman presented to the jury. HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE STRESSED THAT BOTH MCEACERN AND JUDGE SELF HAD AN OBLIGATION TO JUSTICE TO ACT ON THIS INFORMATION AND PROBABLY THROW THESE CASES OUT. SEEMS, HOWEVER, THEY WERE ONLY INTERESTED IN WINNING THESE CASES, EVEN IF THERE WAS A VERY GOOD CHANCE THESE PEOPLE WERE INNOCENT.


That brings us up to Chapter Seven (p. 106), where I'll pick up with my abbreviated notes in class. See you tomorrow.