By DALE LEZON
A federal judge in Waco has recommended that Robertson County, the
county district attorney and a law enforcement officer remain part of a civil lawsuit that accuses a narcotics task force
of violating the rights of more than 20 blacks arrested on drug charges in Hearne five years ago.
Magistrate
Jeffrey Manske this week recommended that the county, District Attorney John Paschall and officer Ron Garney remain in the
lawsuit that names five others, including Limestone County.
State District Judge Walter Smith Jr. can either accept or reject Manske's
recommendation. The trial is set for May 9 in Waco.
"This sends out a message that the system is no longer going to tolerate
targeting people of color," said Joyce Ann Brown, chair of the Texas Justice Network, a nonprofit group advocating criminal
justice reform.
Filed in 2002 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of some
of the people arrested in the raid, the suit accuses members of the South Central Texas Regional Narcotics Task Force of a
pattern of discriminatory practices. It cites the Hearne drug arrests as an example.
Douglas Becker, an attorney for Paschall, Robertson County and four others
named in the suit, said blacks were not targeted for arrest. Hearne had a drug trafficking problem and the task force was
designed to solve it, he said.
In November 2000, 28 people from Hearne were arrested on charges of possessing
or distributing crack cocaine. The arrests followed a six-month undercover investigation involving a confidential informant
working with the task force made up of law enforcement officers from Roberston and Limestone counties.
Five of the people pleaded guilty and received probation, Becker said.
The other cases were dismissed after the trial of one defendant, Corvian Workman, ended in a hung jury.
Becker said a judge dismissed the charges against the defendants on Paschall's
request after Paschall suspected the informant was unreliable. Task force officers investigating the cases after Workman's
trial thought the informant had added baking soda to narcotics recovered as evidence in one of the cases, he said.
"As an honest and ethical prosecutor, Mr. Paschall, when presented with
information of tampering with evidence by (the informant) in this investigation, decided the integrity of the cases involving
this informant had been compromised and justice required that the cases be dismissed," Becker said.
The crumbling of the Hearne drug arrests could be similar to the drug
stings in Tulia in 1999, said Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU in Texas.
In Tulia, a discredited law enforcement officer worked with an interagency
drug task force to arrest 46 people, most of them black. Thirty-eight of the defendants were convicted or reached plea deals.
Gov. Rick Perry pardoned 35 defendants in 2003, after an investigation
into the drug cases was launched amid charges they were racially motivated.
Last year, 45 of those arrested shared a $6 million settlement of a lawsuit
against the officer and the counties and cities he worked for.
