As founder of the Innocence Project of Texas, his efforts scams and shams involving numerous arrests and convictions. None bigger than his work in Tulia.
Blackburn is seen here with his family, from left to right, grandson Oliver, son Sam, daughter-in-law Scotney, grandson Archer, Jeff Blackburn, and partner Jessy Tyler.In the summer of 1999, police in the tiny town of Tulia carried out one of the largest drug stings in West Texas history. Nearly 50 people were arrested, almost all of them Black, and several were quickly sentenced to life in prison."Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage," the local newspaper declared.
On Tuesday, the man once called the “trouble-makingest lawyer in West Texas” died of kidney cancer at age 65. In a series of recent interviews with the Houston Chronicle, Blackburn reflected on the changes that he helped bring about and insisted that the work was bigger than any one person. “Everybody told me he was a character,” said then-Observer reporter Nate Blakeslee, who recalled that Blackburn “smoked like a chimney” and went on about Marxist political theory during their first meeting in Amarillo. “I have to say, he was like nobody I’d ever met in that part of the state.”brought national attention to the absurdities of the Tulia sting, like the fact that there were no video or audio recordings of the supposed drug buys.
A few months later, he faced another, more personal tragedy. Blackburn had only recently married Irina, his fifth wife, who struggled with mental illness. In April 2001, she killed herself. Blackburn also began working more closely with Austin-based criminal justice reform activist Scott Henson, who was arranging for families of the jailed Tulia defendants to travel to the Texas Capitol and push for policy changes.
Blackburn convinced her to turn herself in, offering to represent her for free. If they could prove her alibi, he reasoned, that might gain enough political and media momentum to convince Perry to pardon the remaining defendants.
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