A third Goines case gets dropped
DA reviewing arrests tied to ex-cop in 2019 botched HPD raid
A 35-year-old woman who pleaded guilty to drug dealing after a Houston police officer said he paid her $10 to buy a rock of crack cocaine has had her conviction overturned.
The recent court action marks the latest time local judges have reversed convictions won on the testimony of former officer Gerald Goines, the veteran Houston Police Department narcotics officer now facing charges after investigators accused him of lying to obtain a warrant used in a deadly drug raid last year.
In the months since the Jan. 28, 2019, raid that claimed the lives of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, Goines came under local and federal scrutiny and was charged with murder and violating the rights of the slain couple. Goines maintains his innocence.
Prosecutors also said that Goines’ testimony and casework would be presumed false and identified about 70 defendants whose convictions were solely based on Goines’ casework.
Two brothers — Otis and Steven Mallet — charged in 2008 saw their convictions overturned earlier this year.
Then District Attorney Kim Ogg said defendants convicted from 2008 to 2019 in cases in which Goines played a substantial role would be entitled to a presumption that the former narcotics officer lied to secure their convictions.
Rachel Scott’s case was the third to fall into that category, said Josh Reiss, post-conviction division chief at the district attorney's office.
“We anticipate that there will be numerous similar cases and resolutions in the months ahead,” he said.
Goines’ defense attorney, Nicole DeBorde, has lambasted Ogg over the post-conviction review, and accused prosecutors of trying to influence jurors in pending trials.
“The consistent thread on all these cases is they don't have a shred of independent evidence anything Goines said in these previous cases was incorrect,” she said. “The district attorney is using this in an effort to bolster their claims in the ongoing allegations against him.”
Court records show that in March 2017, Goines approached Scott — a homeless woman with a history of mental illness and a lengthy record of petty crimes — and asked her to help him buy $10 of crack cocaine.
She agreed, and he drove her to a friend’s house, court records show. When that effort proved fruitless, the drug cop drove her to a second house, where Goines alleged she bought a rock of crack cocaine — about 0.2 grams of the drug — and then asked Goines to buy her a beer.
Documents show he gave her
$5 and then dropped her off at a corner store, where other Houston police officers arrested her.
She pleaded guilty to delivery of a controlled substance about a month later and received a two-year deferred adjudication probation, court records show.
The case mirrors many others that Goines handled over his career on HPD’s street-level drug squads.
A Houston Chronicle investigation
last year found nearly 60 percent of the charges in which Goines was the primary officer were for possessing or selling less than a gram of drugs.
More than 70 percent were misdemeanors or state jail felonies, the lowest-level felony in the Texas criminal code, which typically involves well under $100 worth of drugs.
In a writ seeking to overturn the conviction, Scott defense attorney Celeste Blackburn wrote the presumed false testimony was necessary to win a conviction against her client and violated her rights to due process.
Court records show Scott had a history of convictions dating back to 2006, for crimes including prostitution, trespassing and assault.
After her arrest, she ended up back in court twice more — a probation violation led a judge to extend her probation by a year, and she picked up an assault charge earlier this year.
Blackburn said the case raised serious questions about HPD’s crime-fighting strategy and amounted to “easy pickings.”
“Someone on the level of an undercover narcotics officer should be investigating high-level, large-scale, violent drug offenses,” Blackburn said. “Instead we have one driving around to homeless individuals and asking them to buy him a rock of crack. In exchange for a beer.”