AllMovie

Tulia is a small town in Texas that has fallen victim to economic hard times in recent decades; unemployment is high, and drug use is on the rise. In 1998, an undercover police detective named Thomas Coleman began an operation designed to shut down Tulia's drug dealers, and on July 23, 1999, his project climaxed with the arrest of 46 people in the wake of a massive sting operation involving cocaine trafficking. With plenty of support in the local media, prosecutors won convictions against nearly all those who stood trial, with sentences ranging from 20 to 99 years behind bars, while many accepted plea bargain agreements in exchange for guilty pleas. But the fact that 39 of the people arrested were African-American -- representing more than ten percent of Tulia's black community -- led some to question Coleman's methods, and Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer from Amarillo, Texas, began working to overturn the conviction of Freddie Brookins Jr., a local athletic star who stubbornly insisted he was innocent and had never even met Coleman. Blackburn's research not only revealed how little the court-appointed defense attorneys had done for their clients, but uncovered unscrupulous conduct and seriously questionable detective work on Coleman's part. Filmmakers Cassandra Herrman and Kelly Whalen examine Coleman's undercover program and its repercussions in the documentary Tulia, Texas, which received its world premiere at the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival.