Amarillo — A decade later, the only physical evidence that remains of one of the most controversial drug investigations in state history are whited-out lines in a Swisher County docket book.



Records of arrests, indictments, trials and pleas have been wiped away by state order. All that remains is the crimson, metal-reinforced Criminal File & Fee Docket for District Court 7. The docket book has line after line of names crossed out, representing those Tulia residents arrested 10 years ago on claims they were dealing drugs, and whose cases were subsequently dropped under the glare of national scrutiny.



Many Tulia residents and those associated with the July 23, 1999, raid by numerous law enforcement agencies shy away from talking publicly about the incident that catapulted the Swisher County town of about 5,000 into the spotlight and brought the discussion of small-town racism to the forefront.



For some, including many of the 47 defendants arrested, the calamity of the investigation and the ensuing drama remains a wound that has not healed.



At least one resident swept up in the raid said he's short on mercy.



"Have you ever tried to forgive someone and found you simply couldn't do it?" said Christopher Eugene Jackson, in prison for assault on a public servant. "You've cried about it and prayed about it and asked God to help you, but those old feelings of resentment just fail to go away.



"Ten years have gone by and I still can't forgive them for what they did, not just to me but to all of us."



The episode began when dozens of people — most of them poor, African-American and with prior run-ins with the law — were hauled from their beds and paraded in front of local media on the morning of July 23.



The arrests were the culmination of a monthslong investigation by the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force, with much of the work conducted by undercover officer Tom Coleman. Many of the defendants were subsequently given long prison sentences by juries, and others accepted plea bargains.



But cases that first appeared solid began to collapse as Coleman's testimony drew greater and greater scrutiny. In 2003, a judge presiding in evidentiary hearings for four Tulia defendents recommended all the convictions be overturned after determining that Coleman was not credible witness.



Coleman had been arrested for theft, a charge for which he was never convicted. But his arrest was initially withheld from the defense during trials, further eroding the credibility of the prosecutions.



In the end, 35 defendants were pardoned by Gov. Rick Perry on Aug. 22, 2003, and taxpayers in 17 of the counties that participated in the regional task force paid them about $5.9 million as part of a settlement. The defendants split about $4 million, and attorneys were paid the rest.



In April 2003, the county also agreed to pay $250,000 to the defendants in exchange for immunity from civil lawsuits.



Amarillo attorney Jeff Blackburn, who represented many of the defendants during efforts to clear them, said for many the sting was the equivalent of winning a Little League championship.



"This was without a doubt the biggest thing that ever was in their lives," he said. "Where do you go after that? Well, some people don't have any place to go after that, so they're sort of stuck with remembering their Little League days for the rest of their lives. ... This was a big event. It's never going to be repeated again. I think the aftermath of it has given people the opportunity to reveal what they are really about."



As the media circus played out, the city was portrayed as a backwater community.



The Rev. Alan Bean, who used to live in Tulia, started Friends of Justice to fight for the defendants. He said Tulia was a "tragic" situation for everyone, jurors included.



"The whole debate kind of hardened into a hero-thug syndrome," he said.



It was easy for people across the nation to believe the worst about the white juries in Tulia after reports started circulating about injustice.



Jurors "believed that these officials knew what they were doing and knew what was going on in their county," he said. "They put implicit trust in (Sheriff Larry) Stewart and (District Attorney Terry) McEachern. Stewart and McEachern put implicit trust in Tom Coleman, and (terrible) things happened."



Stewart, who retired in 2008, didn't return a message seeking comment. Neither did McEachern, who prosecuted the defendants. After being disciplined by the Texas Bar Association in 2005, he operates a law office in Plainview.



Repeated attempts to reach Coleman, who was convicted of aggravated perjury for his testimony in the 2003 evidentiary hearings and sentenced to 10 years probation, were unsuccessful. The conviction makes him ineligible to be a Texas peace officer.



Ultimately, the failure of the Tulia raids dealt a death blow to Texas' task force structure.



In 2005, a state law overhauled task force coordination and organization, placing any remaining task forces under the supervision of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Before, they operated independently funded with federal money. The reforms made it more difficult to operate task forces in Texas.



Ten years after the raids, Tulia resident Michelle Lee White, 41, said some people still haven't accepted her.



Even though she's a certified nursing assistant and has stayed out of trouble, people think she was guilty and don't hesitate to tell her.



"They still call you a drug dealer even though your case has been overturned," she said. "'They made a mistake by letting us out.' You hear a lot of that."



White, 41, is one who has found forgiveness, though it took years.



"It was really hard because I thought it was so unfair because I went (to prison) because of something I didn't do," she said. "God gave me the strength to overcome it."