The Justice System In Tulia By Nate Blakeslee

Normally, when you hear of someone convicted guilty and sentenced to prison, you don’t really think much past it. Or at least I didn’t. The justice system is responsible to do everything in its power to conduct fair trials and base convictions not on opinion but solely on evidence. However, this is far from the truth. Specifically, Tulia, a small town in Northwest Texas, is a prime example of a town who suffered from this courtroom injustice. Nate Blakeslee tells the town’s true story in his book Tulia. In 1999, forty-seven people were charged with dealing cocaine to a narc named Tom Coleman. Throughout the trials, it was blatantly obvious Coleman had fabricated the arrests, but all forty-seven were convicted anyways. In fact, some were sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. The 1999 Tulia raid proves the justice system makes mistakes and can be influenced by unrelated and unreliable factors such as racism, witness’s word, and job security. The justice system is supposed to be completely unbiased, but the Tulia trial was impacted by race. The town of Tulia has a history of racial problems. Blakeslee writes, “Race was a central organizing principle of life in Tulia, …show more content…
The Tulia cases were based solely on Tom Coleman’s word. Throughout the book, Blakeslee emphasizes on Coleman’s unreliability. Alone, Coleman’s history made him unfit to be a cop and a witness on the stand. He was known to need constant supervision and had a bad temper. In the chapter, “East Meets West,” Blakeslee writes, “It was the third task force he [Coleman] had worked for in the eighteen months since he left Tulia.” Tom Coleman wasn’t a stand out guy, and made many wrongs with a lot of people. In addition, Coleman was also obsessed with guns and “insisted on having a machine gun with him at all times.” The man was a lunatic, but it didn’t matter; it was his word against the