Dallas police paid their drug informants based on the quantity of drugs seized. So some informants decided to manufacture cases by planting fake "cocaine" — variously described as the powder used to chalk billiard cues and as ground-up gypsum wallboard — on about 80 Mexican immigrants.

The police did "field tests," all of which mysteriously registered positive for cocaine, and testified to having witnessed transactions that never happened. (After a long investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted only one cop, and he was acquitted after what seems to have been a fairly badly bungled prosecution.)

The defendants, charged with possession of massive amounts of cocaine, were held on high bail, and since they weren't in fact drug dealers they sat in jail awaiting trial. The public defender's office refused to pay for independent lab testing, and several of the defendants pleaded guilty to avoid 10- and 20- year mandatory sentences.