Blow for injustice: the scandal of Tulia is the scandal of the war on drugs.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town - Book review

Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, by Nate Blakeslee, New York: Public Affairs, 45-0 pages, $26.95

ON JULY 23,1999, Billy Don Wafer was arrested along with 45 other residents of Tulia, Texas, in a drug sting operation that would eventually attract nationwide attention. At the time of his arrest, Wafer, a warehouse foreman in his early 40s with a wife and two children, had nearly completed a 10-year probation sentence for marijuana possession, and if his probation was revoked he'd receive the full 10-year prison sentence. That decision would be made by a judge rather than a jury, in a hearing where the prosecution would have to prove its case by "a preponderance of the evidence" instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt," the standard for full-blown criminal trials. "By the time a revocation reaches the hearing stage," Nate Blakeslee writes in Tulia, his absorbing, suspenseful account of the sting and its aftermath, "it is usually too late for the defendant."

The outlook for Wafer at his February 2000 hearing seemed especially bleak in light of what had happened to the four Tulia defendants who had already been tried. Like Wafer, each was accused of selling cocaine powder to an undercover cop named Tom Coleman, based on no evidence except his word. There were no videotapes, no audio recordings, no corroborating witnesses, no currency with prerecorded serial numbers, no fingerprints on the bags of cocaine. No drugs had been found in the defendants' homes (or in the homes of anyone else arrested that day). Coleman's written reports were sketchy, his memory of the transactions sketchier. Yet all four defendants had been convicted, receiving jury sentences totaling 516 years, for an average of 129 years each.

Coleman claimed he had made a deal on the morning of January 18, 1999, to buy an eightball of cocaine (about 3.5 grams, the weight of a few paper clips) from Wafer, who had arranged for someone else to deliver it later that day. Time cards and testimony from Wafer's boss indicated he was working at the time of the alleged deal, but his boss conceded Wafer sometimes left work during the day to do personal or job-related errands. "Like the other cases," Blakeslee writes, "the contest basically came down to a swearing match between Coleman and the defendant."

Fortunately for Wafer, his lawyer had uncovered information about Coleman that cast serious doubt on his credibility. He had a rocky work history, having abruptly left two law enforcement jobs and skipped town, leaving behind thousands of dollars in debt. His former co-workers described him as an inveterate liar. The local sheriff, who participated in hiring Coleman to work for a federally funded, multi-county, drug task force, had arrested him in the middle of the Tulia operation for stealing gasoline from the government at his previous job--a fact prosecutors had failed to disclose.

Although the judge at Wafer's hearing knew this information from a motion Wafer's lawyer had filed in another case, he had decided not to let the jury in that case hear about the arrest because it had not resulted in a conviction. (The theft charge was dropped after Coleman paid $6,900 in restitution for the debts he owed.) But at the revocation hearing Coleman lied under oath, saying, "I've never been arrested or charged for nothing except a traffic ticket way back when I was a kid. "The judge decided not to revoke Wafer's probation.

Given the "preponderance of the...