Gerald Goines was a veteran officer with the Houston Police Department. He often worked undercover, arranging controlled drug buys and working with confidential informants to learn the habits and practices of the city’s dealers.

On January 28, 2019, Houston police officers, including Goines and Steven Bryant, executed a no-knock search warrant on a house on Harding Drive in the city’s Pecan Park neighborhood. During the raid, police shot and killed Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, the occupants of the house. They also killed the couple’s dog, who lunged at the officers as they breached the door. Goines was shot in the neck, and four other officers were also injured.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation, which is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings. The review didn’t just examine what happened in the frantic minutes after the police broke down the door. It also reviewed the events that led to the raid, including the search-warrant application.

Goines had prepared the search warrant, which said that he had conducted a two-week investigation after the police received an anonymous 911 call about drug activity involving heroin at the house. The application also said that a confidential informant had purchased drugs at the house, that Goines and Bryant had determined the substance bought by the informant to be heroin, and that one of the occupants of the house carried a 9 mm handgun, which made it necessary to use a no-knock warrant.

During the raid, police found a small amount of cocaine and marijuana, along with three shotguns and two rifles, but no heroin or handguns. An investigator with the district attorney’s office interviewed Goines at the hospital on February 13, 2019. Because of his injuries, Goines was unable to speak and wrote his answers. He said the information in the search-warrant application was false. There was no confidential informant. Goines said he bought the drugs from an occupant of the house, although he didn’t know whether Tuttle was that person. In addition, Goines said that Bryant never looked at the alleged contraband to determine that it was heroin.

Goines was suspended following the raid. He and Bryant both retired a few weeks later.

In April 2019, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dismissed several dozen pending cases involving Goines and Bryant, and began reviewing more than 2,200 cases the two officers handled throughout their careers. Ultimately, the district attorney’s review of cases was expanded to cover about 14,000 cases handled by other members of the same narcotics unit in which Goines and Bryant worked. In several instances, according to court documents, confidential informants told investigators that Goines paid them for work that never occurred and that the controlled buys that Goines said happened on police reports never took place.

On August 23, 2019, Goines was charged with two counts of felony murder. The state said that the felony of tampering with a government record by falsifying information on the search-warrant application had led to the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas.

Goines would later be charged with four counts of tampering with records and one count of theft. Three of the tampering counts involved events in 2017 and 2018 that were unrelated to the Harding Drive raid. The theft charge alleged that Goines stole money from taxpayers by fraudulently filing for overtime.

Bryant was charged with three counts of tampering with a government record and one count of theft.

On November 14, 2019, a federal grand jury indicted Goines, Bryant, and Patricia Garcia, who made the anonymous 911 call, on charges of civil-rights violations and obstruction of justice. Separately, the police department conducted a wide-ranging audit of the work by Goines and Bryant. Goines was the lead agent on 84 cases between January 2016 and January 2019. For about 40 percent of those cases, he worked closely with Bryant.

The audit↗, released in late 2019, found extensive problems with Goines’s record-keeping. He failed to properly tag drugs in 48 percent of the cases and had expense discrepancies in 27 percent of the cases.

In February 2020, District Attorney Kim Ogg said her office had identified approximately 70 people whose convictions might have been tainted by Goines’s involvement in their arrest and prosecution. Even before the deadly raid in Pecan Park, defendants had questioned Goines’s credibility and the information he used to make arrests.

Goines and other officers arrested Otis Mallet Jr. and his brother, Steven Mallet, on April 29, 2008, and charged them with possession with intent to distribute cocaine. Steven pled guilty to a count of possession and received a 10-month sentence in jail. At Otis Mallet’s trial, Goines testified that he bought $200 of crack from Steven Mallet and watched as the brothers completed the transaction, taking the drugs out of a blue can in a truck. The can was not tested for fingerprints, Goines said, because he saw the transaction. He also said he used “police money” for the transaction. Another officer involved in the arrests said he never saw the transaction take place.

Several witnesses testified and said they didn’t see any drug transaction, and that Otis Mallet used the property in question for his scrap-metal business. Both Mallet brothers testified and said they didn’t sell drugs to Goines. On January 18, 2011, the jury convicted Otis of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. On February 27, 2014, he was released on parole.

Prior to his release, on April 16, 2013, Otis Mallet filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition said that Goines had committed perjury at Mallet’s trial. Despite his testimony that the $200 came from “police money,” Goines’s police records showed no expenditures for controlled buys in April 2008. The records also showed payment to a confidential informant for $200 in May 2008 for work apparently tied to the Mallet case.

Mallet’s writ petition didn’t advance for six years; the file was lost and a hurricane closed the courthouse. The petition was refiled in November 2019, after Goines’s arrest. Three months later, the state agreed that Mallet’s writ petition should be granted. In its filing, the state said that Goines had testified falsely about the “police money” and that the information about the confidential informant’s involvement hadn’t been disclosed to Mallet’s trial attorney. In addition, there were no fingerprints on the can.

After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Mallet’s writ petition on July 1, 2020, the state dismissed the charges on August 17, 2020. Steven Mallet’s conviction was vacated a year later.

Other Goines defendants had also begun challenging their convictions. Frederick Jeffery was convicted in 2018 of possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Goines testified that an informant had bought drugs at a house on Nettleton Street, and that after arresting Jeffery outside the house, Goines recovered 4.7 grams of methamphetamines and a cellphone, which Jeffery said was his, from the house. Jeffery said he was framed. Jeffery appealed. He said the search warrant Goines obtained listed another person as the target, and there was no evidence that he was in possession of the drugs or that the cellphone was his.

The Court of Appeals for the First District affirmed the conviction on February 21, 2019, just three weeks after the raid at the house on Harding Drive. In March 2019, the state notified Jeffery that Goines was under investigation. A judge then appointed Jeffery an attorney to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition, filed on October 4, 2019, said that Goines had falsified government documents, including the search-warrant application, and had testified falsely about Jeffery’s ownership of the cellphone. As part of its larger investigation, the Houston Police Department interviewed the confidential informant that Goines had used in the search-warrant application for the house on Nettleton Street. She said she did not make a buy at the address and that she and Goines had been doing things “the wrong way” for about three or four years.

Separately, police video from the arrest refuted Goines’s testimony that Jeffery had asked for the cellphone. State technicians examined the phone and found its number was registered to a woman, not Jeffery.

On July 21, 2022, Judge Stacy Allen recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant Jeffery’s petition. Her findings noted that the appellate court had already found that Goines had a “propensity to be untruthful in his undercover drug investigations.”

The appellate court vacated Jeffery’s conviction on September 7, 2022. He was released from prison that day, and the state dismissed the charge on November 17, 2022.

Later, three other defendants – Rachel Scott, Aaron Mathews, and Tony Vaughn Jr. – were exonerated based on Goines’s misconduct. In these cases, which all involved pleas, courts said that Goines’s history of false testimony and falsifying records qualified as impeachment evidence and undermined the integrity of these convictions.

Based on the 20 exonerations, Goines misconduct stretches to 2008, but there are hints that it may have begun earlier. In February 2004, Goines arrested George Floyd, charging him with possession of a controlled substance. Floyd initially fought the charges, but then pled guilty on July 21, 2004, receiving 10 months in jail.

He received a form letter at an old address from the district attorney’s office on March 8, 2019, informing him that Goines was under criminal investigation. By then, Floyd was in Minnesota. He died on May 5, 2020, killed by a police officer in Minneapolis who knelt on Floyd’s neck, an event that sparked protests and a national conversation about police tactics.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole recommended in October 2021 that Floyd receive a posthumous pardon for the Goines-related conviction, but it later withdrew that recommendation.

Bryant pled guilty to the federal obstruction charge on June 1, 2021. After this plea, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the state charges. Bryant has not been sentenced. Garcia pled guilty to conveying false information on March 3, 2021. She was sentenced to 40 months in prison.

Goines’s state and federal cases are not resolved. Otis Mallet and Jeffery each filed federal civil-rights lawsuits against Goines and the Houston Police Department. Mallet’s case was dismissed in 2021. Jeffery’s is still pending. Separately, the Mallet brothers each received state compensation. Otis Mallet received $260,417 and Steven Mallet received $66,667.

Members of this Group

Here are the defendants who had their convictions vacated and charges dismissed based on misconduct in this case: Roderick Bell, Lisa Brown, Joyce Coby, Andre Dillard, Christopher Flowers, Derek Harris, Bobby Garnous, Michael Gastile, Harry Gradney, Tyrik Guy, Frederick Jeffery, Corey Johnson, Steven Mallet, Otis Mallet Jr., Aaron Mathews, Damian McGinnis, JeJuan Miller, DeQuentun Mitchell, Melvin Mitchell, Shanta Renchie, MacArthur Ross Jr., Rachel Scott, Terrence Spriggs,  Sharay Thomas, Tony Vaughn Jr., Cedric Woods, and James Ybarra.

 

— Ken Otterbourg