Posted 1/15/2006 03:48:00 PM by Douglas

New book out on the famous Tulia drug bust. It sounds like it might be an interesting book, but it sounds like the focus is centered much more on race than the insane drug-war.

Vanita Gupta, a Philadelphia lawyer and Yale graduate who was a child of middle class Indian immigrants, was a leader of the post-conviction representation of the Tulia defendants. She saw the case as a window into another century. Watching a television filming of blacks lined up by burly white guards in Tulia, she listened to a black teenager tell reporters, "The only difference between 1920 and now is they can't take us out and hang us on a tree. They can just send us to prison for life. It's the same thing. We'll never be free."

That may be a bit hyperbolic, but sadly, not by much.

It also raised the question of why reasonable doubt did not enter the thinking of Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart, who hired Mr. Coleman, district attorney, Terry McEachern, who prosecuted the cases "with zeal, " or the jurors who handed down "staggeringly long" sentences even for defendants with no prior records. As Mr. Blakeslee put it, the case in many aspects "defied logic."

What the hell does logic have to do with the drug-war? If you're associated with "drugs" in any way, you're guilty, right?