Guilty before proven innocent: how police harassment, jailhouse snitches, and a runaway war on drugs imprisoned an innocent family

Reason, May, 2008 by Radley Balko

Later, Price says, Grayson tried to convince him to say his girlfriend, Jennifer, had cajoled him into taking a fall for the drugs. When Grayson threatened Price with 10 to 15 years in prison if he continued to claim the cocaine as his own, Price says he decided to get an attorney. When later called before the grand jury, Price acknowledged the gun was his, but on the advice of his lawyer he pied the Fifth Amendment when asked about the drugs.

Today Price says the drugs definitely were his, just as he did immediately after the raid. "I lost a lot of friends and relatives over all of this," he says. "People looked at me like I was a ghost." Price was never charged for the cocaine. Five years later, Ann Colomb would take the hit for the cocaine in federal court. Although Price and Jennifer are now married, the Colomb family still hasn't completely forgiven him. Normally warm, Ann Colomb cools at the mention of Price's name. Her sons Edward and Sammie roll their eyes when asked about him. But all seem to hold back their disdain now that he's family.

"He did what he had to do," Edward says, referring to Price pleading the Fifth. "The drugs were his and he tried to take credit for them. I guess you can't blame a guy for not wanting to go to jail."

"He brought drugs into my home," Ann says. "We can move on from that. Timmy's going to have to live with what he done. That's probably enough punishment for him."

Although the raid was a local police operation, its results soon attracted the attention of Assistant U.S. Attorney Grayson. With the aid of more than 30 jailhouse informants, he would grow it into a major federal drug conspiracy case. The first federal indictment against the Colombs came down in May 2002. Subsequent indictments continued through 2004. The final indictment sought to seize Ann and James Colomb's home.

One other charge resulted from the raid. When the police came in, they say they found Sammie Davis in a room where an unloaded shotgun was stored in a closet. A police officer at the scene says Davis immediately admitted to him that the gun belonged to him. Davis denies this, explaining that he didn't even live in the house at the time. (All of Ann's sons had moved out by then.) Although there was nothing illegal about the gun itself, Davis was a convicted felon, the result of his no-contest plea in the 1993 incident. He'd later be convicted in a separate trial of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The Colomb family's lawyers believe that news of Sammie's conviction spread through the federal prison system, inspiring a second wave of jailhouse informants to come to Grayson with new allegations of selling drugs to the Colomb family.

The Government Builds Its Case

Brett Grayson had made a name for himself by bringing down the drug empire of Houston kingpin John Timothy Cotton between 2000 and 2004. But after Cotton's conviction, defense attorneys alleged that Grayson had relied on improper jailhouse snitch testimony, testimony they say ranged from inconsistent to provably false. One attorney alleged he had proof that a network of federal prison inmates called the "Hot Boyz" were trading and selling information about pending drug cases, including notes from the prosecutors, photos of the suspects, and even grand jury testimony.