Tulia, Corroboration, and HB 2351

      Background:

      In the widely publicized Tulia, Texas drug bust, the sole convicting evidence against a large number of African American citizens of Tulia was the uncorroborated word of a single undercover police officer. The officer testified that he wrote the salient details of each buy on his leg before heading back to Amarillo to file his reports. No video or audio tape was used, nor any other form of evidence gathering. In addition, the agent was essentially unsupervised in the field. His supervising officer visited with him on occasion.

     Tulia residents who did not have an unbreakable alibi faced extremely high sentences from local juries, and many plead out despite claims of innocence rather than take sentences as high as 99 years. Without a corroboration requirement, individuals must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they could not have committed the crime charged--turning our justice system on its head.