[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 2620 Introduced in House (IH)]







109th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 2620

To increase the evidentiary standard required to convict a person for a 
   drug offense, to require screening of law enforcement officers or 
others acting under color of law participating in drug task forces, and 
                          for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 25, 2005

  Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas (for herself, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Rangel, Mr. 
    Towns, Mr. Payne, Mr. Wynn, Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Rush, Mr. Lewis of 
Georgia, Mr. Davis of Illinois, Ms. Woolsey, Mr. Fattah, Mr. Jefferson, 
  Ms. Watson, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, and Mr. Owens) introduced the 
  following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To increase the evidentiary standard required to convict a person for a 
   drug offense, to require screening of law enforcement officers or 
others acting under color of law participating in drug task forces, and 
                          for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``No More Tulias: Drug Law Enforcement 
Evidentiary Standards Improvement Act of 2005''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) In recent years it has become clear that programs 
        funded by the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant 
        program (Byrne Grants) have perpetuated racial disparities, 
        corruption in law enforcement, and the commission of civil 
        rights abuses across the country. This is especially the case 
        when it comes to the program's funding of hundreds of regional 
        antidrug task forces. The grants for these antidrug task forces 
        have been dispensed to State governments with very little 
        Federal oversight and have been prone to misuse and corruption.
            (2) Numerous Government Accountability Office reports have 
        found that the United States Justice Department has 
        inadequately monitored Byrne discretionary grants. A 2001 
        General Accounting Office report found that a third of the 
        grants did not contain required monitoring plans. 70 percent of 
        grant files did not contain required progress reports. 41 
        percent did not contain financial reports covering the full 
        grant period. A 2002 report by the Heritage Foundation reported 
        that ``there is virtually no evidence'' that Byrne grants have 
        been successful in reducing crime and that the program lacks 
        ``adequate measures of performance''.
            (3) A 2002 report by the American Civil Liberties Union of 
        Texas identified 17 recent scandals involving Byrne-funded 
        antidrug task forces in Texas, including cases of the 
        falsification of Government records, witness tampering, 
        fabricating evidence, false imprisonment, stealing drugs from 
        evidence lockers, selling drugs to children, large-scale racial 
        profiling, sexual harassment, and other abuses of official 
        capacity. Recent scandals in other States include the misuse of 
        millions of dollars in Byrne grant money in Kentucky and 
        Massachusetts, wrongful convictions based on police perjury in 
        Missouri, and negotiations with drug offenders to drop or lower 
        their charges in exchange for money or vehicles in Alabama, 
        Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and 
        Wisconsin.
            (4) The most well-known Byrne-funded task force scandal 
        occurred in Tulia, Texas, where dozens of African American 
        residents (totaling over 16 percent of the town's African 
        American population) were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced 
        to decades in prison, based solely on the uncorroborated 
        testimony of one undercover officer whose background included 
        past allegations of misconduct, sexual harassment, unpaid 
        debts, and habitual use of a racial epithet. The undercover 
        officer was allowed to work alone, and not required to provide 
        audiotapes, video surveillance, or eyewitnesses to corroborate 
        his allegations. Despite the lack of physical evidence or 
        corroboration, the charges were vigorously prosecuted. After 
        the first few trials resulted in convictions and lengthy 
        sentences, many defendants accepted plea bargains. Suspicions 
        regarding the legitimacy of the charges eventually arose after 
        two of the accused defendants were able to produce convincing 
        alibi evidence to prove that they were out of State or at work 
        at the time of the alleged drug purchases. Texas Governor Rick 
        Perry eventually pardoned the Tulia defendants (after four 
        years of imprisonment), but these kinds of scandals continue to 
        plague Byrne grant program spending.
            (5) A case arose in a Federal court in Waco, Texas 
        concerning the wrongful arrest of 28 African Americans out of 
        4,500 other residents of Hearne, Texas. In November 2000, these 
        individuals were arrested on charges of possession or 
        distribution of crack cocaine, and they subsequently filed a 
        case against the county government. On May 11, 2005, a 
        magistrate judge found sufficient evidence that a Byrne-funded 
        anti-drug task force had routinely targeted African Americans 
        to hold the county liable for the harm suffered by the 
        plaintiffs. Plaintiffs in that lawsuit alleged that for the 
        past 15 years, based on the uncorroborated tales of informants, 
        task force members annually raided the African American 
        community in eastern Hearne to arrest the residents identified 
        by the confidential informants, resulting in the arrest and 
        prosecution of innocent citizens without cause. On the eve of 
        trial the counties involved in the Hearne task force scandal 
        settled the case, agreeing to pay financial damages to the 
        plaintiffs.
            (6) Byrne grant-related scandals have grown so prolific 
        that the Texas legislature has passed several reforms in 
        response to them, including outlawing racial profiling and 
        changing Texas law to prohibit drug offense convictions based 
        solely on the word of an undercover informant. The Criminal 
        Jurisprudence Committee of the Texas House of Representatives 
        issued a report in 2004 recommending that all of the State's 
        federally funded antidrug task forces be abolished because they 
        are inherently prone to corruption. The Committee reported, 
        ``Continuing to sanction task force operations as stand-alone 
        law enforcement entities--with widespread authority to operate 
        at will across multiple jurisdictional lines--should not 
        continue. The current approach violates practically every sound 
        principle of police oversight and accountability applicable to 
        narcotics interdiction.'' Most recently the Texas legislature 
        passed a law that ends the ability of a narcotics task force to 
        operate as an entity with no clear accountability. The 
        legislation transfers authority for multicounty drug task 
        forces to the Department of Public Safety and channels one-
        quarter of asset forfeiture proceeds received by the task 
        forces to a special fund to support drug abuse prevention 
        programs, drug treatment and other programs designed to reduce 
        drug use in the county where the assets are seized.
            (7) Texas's ``corroboration'' law was passed thanks to a 
        coalition of Christian conservatives and civil rights 
        activists. As one Texas preacher related, requiring 
        corroboration ``puts a protective hedge around the ninth 
        commandment, `You shall not bear false witness against your 
        neighbor.' As long as people bear false witness against their 
        neighbors, this Biblical law will not be outdated.''
            (8) During floor debate, conservative Texas legislators 
        pointed out that Mosaic law requires corroboration: ``One 
        witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or 
        for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two 
        witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter 
        be established.'' Deuteronomy 19:15. Jesus concurred with the 
        corroboration rule: ``If thy brother shall trespass against 
        thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. . . 
        . But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two 
        more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word 
        may be established.'' Matthew 18:15-16.
            (9) Texas's ``corroboration'' law had an immediate positive 
        impact. Once prosecutors needed more than just the word of one 
        person to convict someone of a drug offense they began 
        scrutinizing law enforcement tactics. This new scrutiny led to 
        the uncovering of massive corruption and civil rights abuse by 
        the Dallas police force. In what became known nationally as the 
        ``Sheetrock'' scandal, Dallas police officers and undercover 
        informants were found to have set up dozens of innocent people, 
        mostly Mexican immigrants, by planting fake drugs on them 
        consisting of chalk-like material used in Sheetrock and other 
        brands of wallboard. The revelations led to the dismissal of 
        over 40 cases (although some of those arrested were already 
        deported). In April 2005, a former Dallas narcotics detective 
        was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his role in the scheme. 
        Charges against others are pending.
            (10) Many regional antidrug task forces receive up to 75 
        percent of their funding from the Byrne grant program. As such, 
        the United States Government is accountable for corruption and 
        civil rights abuses inherent in their operation. It is the 
        sense of Congress that Byrne grants should be prohibited for 
        States that do not exercise effective control over these task 
        forces. At a bare minimum, no State that fails to prohibit 
        criminal convictions based solely on the testimony of a law 
        enforcement officer or informants should receive a Byrne grant. 
        Corroborative evidence (video or audio tape, drugs, and money, 
        etc.) should always be required for such convictions to be 
        sustained.

SEC. 3. LIMITATION ON RECEIPT OF BYRNE GRANT FUNDS AND OTHER DEPARTMENT 
              OF JUSTICE LAW ENFORCEMENT ASSISTANCE.

    (a) Limitation.--For any fiscal year, a State shall not receive any 
amount that would otherwise be allocated to that State under section 
506 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (42 
U.S.C. 3756), or any amount from any other law enforcement assistance 
program of the Department of Justice, unless the State--
            (1) does not fund any drug task forces for that fiscal 
        year; or
            (2) has in effect throughout the State laws that ensure--
                    (A) a person is not convicted of a drug offense 
                unless the fact that a drug offense was committed, and 
                the fact that the person committed that offense, are 
                each supported by evidence other than the eyewitness 
                testimony of a law enforcement officer or individuals 
                acting on behalf of law enforcement officers; and
                    (B) a law enforcement officer does not participate 
                in a drug task force unless the honesty and integrity 
                of that officer is evaluated and found to be at an 
                appropriately high level.
    (b) Regulations.--The Attorney General shall prescribe regulations 
to carry out subsection (a).
    (c) Reallocation.--Amounts not allocated by reason of subsection 
(a) shall be reallocated to States not disqualified by failure to 
comply with subsection (a).

SEC. 4. COLLECTION OF DATA.

    (a) In General.--A State recipient of funds under section 3(a)(2) 
shall collect data, for the last year funds were allocated, as to the--
            (1) racial distribution of charges made during that year;
            (2) nature of the criminal law specified in the charges 
        made; and
            (3) city or law enforcement jurisdiction in which the 
        charge was made.
    (b) Report.--The data collected under subsection (a) shall be 
reported to Congress within 180 days prior to the award of funds for 
each fiscal year of eligibility to receive grants.
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