Jeff Blackburn ...
He was the lead attorney in that case
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tuliatexas/people.html
The People
Meet the people featured in TULIA, TEXAS and learn what some of them have been doing since filming ended.
headshot of Jeff Blackburn
Jeff Blackburn
Criminal defense attorney
“The treatment these people received in the court system was so unfair, but I saw that there was still something that could be done for them.”
Jeff Blackburn represented several of the Tulia drug sting defendants and joined other civil rights attorneys to investigate agent Tom Coleman, leading to the eventual prison release and pardons for all the convicted Tulia defendants.
After his work in Tulia, Blackburn founded the West Texas Innocence Project at the Texas Tech University School of Law in Lubbock, where he continues to assist people wrongfully imprisoned in Texas. He also has a private law practice in Amarillo, where he lives.
headshot of Nate Blakeslee
Nate Blakeslee
Journalist
“The drug task force program was launched in the late eighties…. In very short order it drastically changed the way the drug war was prosecuted.”
Nate Blakeslee was the first to chronicle the 1999 Tulia drug sting and its aftermath for the Texas Observer. He later wrote the book Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town (Public Affairs, 2006).
headshot of Freddie Brookins, Jr.
Freddie Brookins, Jr.
Pardoned defendant
“When I grabbed the indictment I was looking at and I seen ‘delivery of cocaine,’ I looked at him and I was like, ‘No, man, I think you all have the wrong house.’”
One of 46 people arrested in the 1999 Tulia drug sting, Freddie Brookins, Jr. served four years of a 20-year prison sentence before his felony conviction was overturned in 2003.
Brookins grew up in Tulia and returned to live there after he was released from prison. He works as a cook and is raising his daughters with his wife, Terri.
headshot of Freddie Brookins, Sr.
headshot of Pattie Brookins
Freddie Brookins, Sr. and Pattie Brookins
Tulia residents and parents of defendant Freddie Brookins Jr.
“I wouldn't think that there's a community around anywhere that doesn't have a drug problem. But it wasn't just in the black community.” —Freddie Brookins, Sr.
“There’s still a lot of good people here. Not all, I wouldn’t say all the white people was wrong. But if I had a choice I wouldn’t live here.” —Pattie Brookins
A long-time Tulia resident, Freddie Brookins, Sr. organized with the multiracial coalition Friends of Justice to free his son from prison. He recently retired after working 30 years at a nearby meatpacking plant, where he had moved up the line to a management position.
Pattie Brookins does private home care for the elderly; when she’s not working, she and her husband spend time with their grandchildren, who all live in Tulia.
headshot of Ron Chapman
Ron Chapman
Retired Texas district judge
“[Tom Coleman] very rarely answered a question directly. He’d answer a question with a question. He was very devious in his testimony.”
Retired Texas District Judge Ron Chapman presided over the evidentiary hearing that led to the overturning of the Tulia drug sting cases.
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