"But I do work in a southern town that is mostly white."Seems to me that if I choose to commit a crime in your town, I'm going to get a white jury. If I am non-white, commit a crime in your town, get caught, and go to trial, who's fault is it that my jury is not my color?
And I bet that white jury ain't going to be as tolerant of my crime as a jury of my peers in the 'hood would be.
And I bet that my defense is not going to be as thorough as OJ's, in that I can't afford those kinds of attorneys -- but I knew that before I committed the crime, now didn't I?
Just a little too late to be crying about the injustice of it all when I knew full well ahead of time where I stood. Yet I went ahead and did the crime anyways.
Back to Tulia. IIRC, the juries were of mixed race in the 11 trials. Also, the purchased drugs were presented as evidence -- it's just that no drugs were found when the perps were arrested.
The drug dealing was going on in a black neighborhood. Consequently, almost all of those arrested were black. Oops, looks like racism.
Given the fact that 38 were arrested in a sweep, almost all of them black, by a white cop, in Texas, no video, no audio -- and here come the international media along with every black advocate known to man who wouldn't miss the oppotunity.
"The injustice in Tulia, is the legacy of a national pattern of state-supported and sanctioned terrorism against black people."
-- Rev. Jesse Jackson, 10/30/03
They got off cheap with $6 million.
"Given the fact that 38 were arrested in a sweep, almost all of them black, by a white cop, in Texas, no video, no audio -- and here come the international media along with every black advocate known to man who wouldn't miss the oppotunity."
You are leaving out the fact that some of the people he accused had solid alibis. At least one was acquitted at trial. Coleman's former boss declared on the stand that he was a liar. A prosecutor even testified that the man was a liar. He was the kind of guy who would run up debts and leave town without paying them. He even had a warrant issued against him for stealing gas which he took care of by paying the money he owed. At a motion for new trials hearing several of his former co-workers testified that he was racist, irresponsible, dishonest and paranoid. The judge at that hearing adjourned the trial before allowing Coleman to finish testifying. Later the judge announced that "Tom Coleman is simply not a credible witness under oath."
Coleman was convicted of perjury by a jury of his peers who had heard all of the evidence. He is a proven liar, and there were instances where the people he accused of making drug transactions with him were nowhere near where he claimed them to be at the time of the transactions. The people who were convicted were convicted on his word alone, the word of a liar. Many of them may have been dealing drugs, but if we allow people to be convicted on nothing but the word of liars, we're going to see alot of innocent people convicted in the end and there aren't many things worse that can happen to someone than to be forced to spend several years of their lives in prison because some man with a badge lied about them.
It is obvious that you don't care if innocent people go to prison as long as some drug dealers go along with them. To you, the ends justify the means.
Drug warrior that you are, you should be pissed enough to personally fix the wagon of this idiot cop. He was either crimminally corrupt or absolutely incompetent by the proved inaccuracies dropping his credibility to zero.
Assuming all he arrested were actually involved with drugs, he personally provided for their ability to beat the rap and collect a settlement from the taxpayers, in addition to the gift of destroying the public confidence in the law enforcement and court systems.
The only thing he proved is that he and everything connected with him are unreliable.