It has been greater than 5 years since Houston law enforcement officials killed Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, a middle-aged couple falsely implicated in drug dealing, after breaking into their dwelling on Harding Avenue. That raid was primarily based on a fraudulent search warrant affidavit by which veteran narcotics officer Gerald Goines described a heroin buy that he later admitted by no means occurred. Efforts to carry Goines accountable for his deadly dishonesty hit one other roadblock final week when a Harris County decide dismissed two felony homicide fees in opposition to him.
The Harris County District Lawyer’s Workplace charged Goines with two counts of felony homicide in August 2019, seven months after the Harding Avenue raid. Based on its grievance, Goines dedicated “the felony offense of Tampering with a Government Record, and while in the course of and [in] furtherance of the commission of said offense did commit an act clearly dangerous to human life”—i.e., “making forcible entry into a residence by armed peace officers through the use of a ‘no knock’ search warrant based on false information provided knowingly by the defendant,” thereby inflicting the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas.
A grand jury backed these fees in an indictment issued on January 15, 2020, and District Court docket Choose Frank Aguilar declined to dismiss them. However District Court docket Choose Veronica Nelson, who took over the case this 12 months after Aguilar was suspended due to a home violence arrest, was persuaded by Goines’ declare that the fees didn’t adequately specify the underlying felony.
Prosecutors cited Part 37.10 of the Texas Penal Code, which makes it a third-degree felony to tamper with a authorities report in any of six methods. As a result of the indictment didn’t say precisely how Goines had violated that statute, his attorneys argued, it impaired his skill to mount a protection. “It doesn’t give us adequate notice of what it is specifically that we have to defend against,” stated Mac Secrest, considered one of Goines’ attorneys.
“The Harris County District Attorney’s office is shocked and tremendously disappointed that a judge would choose to revisit this issue, knowing that her predecessor had already ruled the defendant’s position meritless,” the workplace stated in response to Nelson’s ruling. “The office is considering all its options, including amending the indictment, with an eye towards trying this case as soon as possible to ensure justice for the victims of these crimes.”
The state case in opposition to Goines had been scheduled for trial in June. Nelson’s choice might delay the trial by a 12 months or extra, relying on how lengthy it takes to attraction the ruling and/or search a brand new indictment. Goines additionally faces federal civil rights fees in reference to the Harding Avenue raid, however there was no obvious motion in that case for the reason that indictment was introduced in November 2019.
Two different defendants within the federal case have pleaded responsible. Patricia Ann Garcia, a neighbor whose phony tip prompted Goines’ investigation of Tuttle and Nicholas, pleaded responsible to creating false reviews in March 2021 and was sentenced to 40 months in jail. In June 2021, former Houston narcotics officer Steven Bryant, who had backed up Goines’ fictional account of arranging for a confidential informant to purchase heroin from Tuttle, pleaded responsible to falsifying data and obstructing the ensuing federal investigation. He has not been sentenced but.
Goines and Bryant are additionally defendants in two federal lawsuits filed by relations of Tuttle and Nicholas in January 2021. These lawsuits, considered one of which additionally names former Houston Police Chief Artwork Acevedo as a defendant, are scheduled for trial in September.
“Justice in the HPD Harding Street killings remains a far-off prospect, at least in the hands of the US Attorney and District Attorney offices,” Mike Doyle, an legal professional who represents the Nicholas household, stated in an emailed assertion. “The family of Rhogena Nicholas remains disappointed that local, state, and federal authorities have either ignored this injustice or helped delay the Goines murder prosecution. The legal explanations aside, we’re now in a sixth year of a taxpayer-funded coverup of these murders. The Nicholas family still will not give up its ongoing fight to reveal the truth of what happened before, during and after the killing of Rhogena.”