The good news is that the last two victims of the Tulia drug sting, Landis and Mandis Barrow, have had their records cleared.  (The full explanation for this delay of justice can be found here.)  The bad news is that both men remain entangled in the criminal justice system.

It is difficult to decipher the extent of the Barrow twins’ involvement with Tom Coleman in Tulia.  My files are stuffed with letters from Landis and Mandis wrote me while in prison, and my book Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas benefited from that correspondence.   A few Tulia defendants admitted selling crack to the undercover agent, but they were charged with selling powder cocaine. 

This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it isn’t.  Coleman bought a few ten or fifteen dollar rocks of crack cocaine from known users but received as much as $200 for the highly diluted 8-balls of powder he turned in to the Amarillo Police Department.

Ultimately, the details didn’t matter.  Coleman was exposed as a racist and a pathological liar whose word under oath was meaningless. 

Landis and Mandis Barrow were on deferred adjudication when Coleman filed charges against were sentenced to 20 years on the strength of those charges.  When Coleman’s credibility vanished, the Barrow Twins should have been released, but that never happened.   Attorneys worked behind the scenes and I did everything in my power to expose the fact that two men were in state prison on the word of a perjurer, but to no avail.

Now, over a decade too late, Potter County DA Randall Sims admits his office got it wrong back in the day.

The latter portion of the article below portrays Landis and Mandis as hardened criminals.   Landis faces two misdemeanor charges, one stemming from an altercation with a girlfriend, the other for felon in possession of a firearm.  Now that he is no longer a felon, the second charge should be dropped.  We’ll see.   

The federal narcotics charges against Mandis Barrow are far more serious.  Federal conspiracy cases are generally built by “debriefing” suspected dealers and getting them to flip on their friends. 

In this case, the Big Cheese turns out to be an oversized gentleman with an interesting back story.  He was driving through Midland, Texas one day and ran out of gas.  Seeing an enormous black man pushing his vehicle, a Midland police car pulled in behind him.  Apparently the police camera captured footage of the man in which two inches of butt crack figured prominently.  Thinking this was hilarious, the cops put it up on YouTube and it went viral.  The victim sued the Department, won a sizable settlement and apparently used it to get established in the drug game. 

Mandis Barrow met this man in Amarillo and the two had some business dealings.  Eventually they had a severe falling out and the big man became so incensed he tried to retaliate by ratting Mandis out to the Amarillo police as a drug dealer.  The charges were investigated and the case was dropped due to a lack of evidence. 

Several months later, the big man was arrested on drug charges in Midland and the case was kicked up to the feds.  Not surprisingly, Mandis Barrow was one of the fifteen names the man gave to federal investigators. 

The story of the Barrow twins demonstrates how hard it can be for former inmates to readjust to the free world.  Barred from most legitimate forms of employment, they easily drift into sketchy social and professional associations which, while not necessarily illegal, place them at considerable risk.   This explains why 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated.

Finally, I urge you to go to the Globe-News story and check out the comments at the end of the story.  Not surprisingly, most of the respondents believe that all 47 Tulia defendants were guilty as charged and the racial animus isn’t subtle.  Consider this charming example: “I grew up in a City with 85 % black population and I can say for sure they all want to be rappers, NFL football players or pimps. Very few would be willing to not be on the streets and have a square job. Some, maybe but majority rules. Drug selling is quite lucrative, and easy which translates to less or no work. All you need to do is be able to run fast… Get rid of all 47 and I bet the Metropolis of Tulia would not miss them at all.”

Judge reverses probation decision of Tulia brothers

By JANELLE STECKLEIN

Created Feb 5 2011 – 12:12am

A Potter County judge Friday reversed a decade-old decision to revoke the probation of twin brothers who were the last of 47 people imprisoned in the infamous Tulia drug sting.

Landis and Mandis Barrow, both 32, spent nearly 10 years behind bars after a disgraced narcotics officer accused them of selling him drugs. That charge resulted in the Barrows’ probation being revoked on the robbery convictions and a judge sentencing both men to 20 years in prison.

District Court Judge Don Emerson decided there was no longer enough evidence to justify revoking the twins’ probation. It was news the Barrows had been waiting to hear for months, ever since the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in October 2009 and June 2010 overturned their aggravated robbery convictions and ordered hearings for the pair.

The sting in Tulia led to a July 1999 raid that rounded up the Barrows among more than three-dozen African-Americans, almost 15 percent of the town’s population of black adults. The case crashed around undercover agent Tom Coleman, called a liar and racist by a judge and convicted of aggravated perjury. Gov. Rick Perry issued pardons, and the Tulia defendants agreed to share a $6 million settlement that resulted from a civil lawsuit filed over the wrongful convictions.

Unlike the other defendants in that case, the Barrows in 1999 already were serving 10 years of deferred adjudication for aggravated robbery in Potter County. Prosecutors used Coleman’s allegations to revoke their probation, and a judge handed out the 20-year sentences.

It took 10 years for a state appeals courts to rule that the pair deserved a new hearing.

The 47th District Attorney’s Office decided two weeks ago to dismiss Mandis Barrow’s aggravated robbery probation revocation case but planned to proceed against his brother. Emerson halted that effort.

“I think the thing to do is grant the request to dismiss,” the judge said. “State’s motion to proceed is dismissed.”

Landis Barrow had no visible reaction. “It was long overdue,” he said afterward.

District Attorney Randall Sims said prosecutors will forgo an appeal.

He said prosecutors chose to pursue Landis Barrow’s case because there was another criminal allegation against him for evading arrest at the time of the original hearing more than a decade ago. They wanted a judge to decide if that alone would have been enough to revoke his probation.

“This (ruling today) is exactly what should have happened to those guys,” Sims said. “It wasn’t right they got treated differently (than the other Tulia defendants).”

The Barrows’ legal troubles are not over.

Landis Barrow is facing a misdemeanor assault charge in Randall County over a dispute with a woman in July. He said he was attempting to prevent his girlfriend from driving drunk that night.

Mandis Barrow faces a federal cocaine trafficking charge in Midland for conspiracy to distribute and possess more than a pound of crack cocaine. Parts of the indictment and case are sealed because authorities are still searching for a number of alleged co-conspirators. He’s being held without bond.

Landis Barrow said his brother is innocent and wants to take a polygraph test to prove it.

Both men also face misdemeanor charges of unlawfully carrying a weapon in Wichita County, where state troopers say the brothers and another man flashed a pistol at a woman in June.  State police said the men denied knowing weapons were inside the vehicle.