Another Goines arrest overturned
A man who pleaded guilty to selling drugs more than a decade ago is actually innocent, the state’s highest court ruled Wednesday, citing the “deceit” and “perjury” of the former Houston police officer who arrested him.
Steven Mallet and his brother have long contended they didn’t sell Gerald Goines drugs outside of a south Houston home back in the spring of 2008.
But Goines — the former officer accused of lying to obtain a warrant used in a 2019 drug raid that ended with the deaths of two people and who is now charged with murder — told prosecutors he’d arranged to buy a “quarter” of crack cocaine from the brothers. He charged Otis Mallet, now 65, with two felonies and Steven Mallet, 62, with one.
The case rested almost entirely on Goines’ testimony, and at trial, a jury convicted Otis Mallet. They sentenced him to eight years in prison. The elder Mallet brother served two years behind bars before being paroled, but he always maintained his innocence and later challenged his conviction.
After Goines’ alleged misconduct surfaced in early 2019, prosecutors and defense attorneys asked a local judge to recommend his conviction be overturned. The state’s highest criminal court came to the same decision last summer.
After spending 10 months in
jail, Steven Mallet agreed to plead guilty because he wanted to get out of jail. Both brothers filed post-conviction writs seeking their cases be overturned, and prosecutors ultimately agreed with defense attorneys that their cases should be overturned. Wednesday’s opinion comes more than a year after Harris County District Judge Kelli Johnson recommended the Court of Criminal Appeals formally overturn his conviction.
On Wednesday, judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals noted that Goines’ “deceit, perjury, and continued wrongdoing lie at the heart of this case. … As the final arbiter of criminal cases in Texas, this Court cannot stay silent in the face of such unmistakable injustice.”
Goines came under scrutiny in January 2019, after he and other narcotics officers raided a home on Harding Street in south Houston that devolved into gunfire and ended with the deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. In the aftermath of the raid, police investigators said Goines had lied about ever buying drugs from the home. The scandal prompted additional investigations from prosecutors and the FBI, leading to charges against Goines and 11 other current and former officers.
Attorney Bob Wicoff, who handled his post-conviction writ, said Mallet rebuffed initial plea deals from prosecutors that would have required him to sign paperwork that implicated his brother.
On Wednesday, Wicoff said Steven Mallet was “relieved” to learn that the state’s highest criminal court had found him innocent.
“He’d been concerned that they might not understand why someone who is not guilty might plead guilty,” Wicoff said. “And this is one of several situations where people plead guilty, even when they’re not guilty.”
Wicoff said it’s not uncommon for defendants to make such pleas in order to get out of jail, or because they can’t afford the cost of a trial, or don’t believe a jury would believe them.
So far, the Mallet brothers and one other former defendant have seen their cases overturned.
In a statement, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said Mallet’s case was just “one of thousands” under review by prosecutors following charges filed against Goines and other current and former HPD narcotics officers.
“When evidence of a person’s innocence comes to light, even years later, it is a privilege to obtain justice for them,” Ogg said.
In response to the news of the court’s decision, Goines’ attorney, Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, repeated past accusations that Ogg was using cases like the Mallet brothers’ to strengthen a weak case against her client without any significant evidence.
“There is no new or actual evidence to support the DA’s recommendation in the case other than a desire to bolster the case against Gerald,” she said.