Category: Race and the Law

Tulia-style drug bust draws suspicion in Wichita Falls

· 5 Comments ·
Alleged Tulia kingpin, Joe Welton Moore

The good folks in Wichita Falls, Texas are celebrating the arrest of 44 drug kingpins, with four or five additional arrests waiting in the wings. 

“It’s a good number of arrests, but the reality is there are probably still five-times as many of these types of criminals out there,” Sheriff David Duke told the Wichita Falls Times Record News. “It’s a scary thing to think that this stuff is being sold in our neighborhoods, near our children. A lot of these dealers are armed because of competition with other dealers. And many will steal, rob and commit financial crimes to facilitate their operations.”

No one associated with the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 can read these words without recalling the proud pronouncements of Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart and his undercover man, Tom Coleman. (more…)

McWhorter: end the drug war and racial tension evaporates

· 3 Comments ·
John McWhorter

John McWhorter is a conservative African-American who enjoys needling white liberals and the “racism-is-still-real” brand of civil rights advocacy.  For over a year now McWhorter’s take on race has taken on a decidedly libertarian tone.  He’s for legalizing drugs; all of them.

The Cato Institute’s current newsletter contains a PDF version of McWhorter’s new message.  The version I have pasted below appeared last year in The New Republic.

If you are a fan of HBO’s The Wire (the best television of all time in my opinion), the essential features of McWhorter’s argument will come as no surprise.  African-American youth have little incentive to look for conventional work because drug money comes so easy.  As a result, hundreds of thousands of black males are doing time on drug charges, inner city street gangs slaughter one another in turf battles, black children have no fathers, black women give up on finding a marriage partner, and everything goes to hell. (more…)

Grisham’s “The Confession” is captivating

· 7 Comments ·

Reviewed by Charles Kiker

John Grisham, The Confession, Doubleday, 2010

John Grisham’s novels are always good reads. This one is—no other word is adequate—captivating. It is a must read for anyone interested in the injustice of the criminal justice system, especially in Texas and especially as regards capital punishment. It is a recommended read for those not interested in the injustice of the criminal justice system, in the hope that they might get interested.

It is a work of fiction, but not really. So many real events have been worked into this novel that I had to remind myself occasionally that I was not reading the Dallas Morning News, or watching the evening news on television. For example, the judge and the prosecutor are sleeping together—and they are not husband and wife—during the trial of Donte Drumm. The Court of Criminal Appeals closes at 5:00 PM and will not let attorneys in at 5:07 even though they know attorneys are on the way for a last minute appeal. Coerced confessions, jailhouse snitches, perjured testimony—it’s all here. (more…)