Imagine for a minute you sit on the Senate Commmittee on the Judiciary as Texas’s senior senator. Imagine for a minute you turn a blind eye to flagrant racism. But, I repeat myself.
Always, always remember that John Cornyn, as Texas’s attorney general, awarded Tom Coleman Texas Lawman of the Year for perjuring himself that he had purchased drugs from a sixth of the black population of Tulia, a small town in the Panhandle’s Swisher County, and delayed and delayed and delayed when Coleman’s case wasn’t simply disputed: It was refuted when bank records proved one woman he accused was in another state when she supposedly sold him drugs.
The case made no sense because almost all of the drug kingpins remained dirt poor. the evidence included no drugs, included no money.
A decent person, when contronted with a clear case of wrongful imprisonment, woujld have found a way to release the subjects from Texas’s prison system while things were adjudicated. For instance, the Enron defendants got to wait things out in the comfort of their homes. (No, that’s unfair. Cornyn recused himself from direct involvement in the Enrol politician rather than return $193,000 of their campaign contributions.) I digress.
Tulia stands as one of the most egregious cases of racial oppression by a state’s law enforcement system since Chicago police killed Fred Hampton. Forty of the 46 arrests Coileman made were black. They were convicted because the Swisher prosecutions pulled the strings of rural Texas racism while trumpeting cases they had to have been able to tell smelled. A lot of blame can go around.
Cornyn, though, was the guy at the top, and re refused to get it right. Nothing about him suggests he was simply naiv. Either his delusion was severe, or he awarded prosecutorial fraud intentionally. Since th GOP has chosen to remove itself from any examination of racism, I get to pick my criticala theory. He is guilty of the latter.
Here are a couple of links. There are more. I know it’s now old news, but it is by no means resolved and it should tell you wat Cornyn thinks consist of made up Constitutional rights.
www.law.northwestern.edu/...
texassignal.com/...