Prosecutors Who Want Credit for Investigating Police Corruption Are Happy To Steal Money From Innocent People

On October 27, 2016, the same day that Houston drug cops searched a house based on a marijuana sale that never happened, they searched the house next door based on a fictional crack cocaine purchase. The first search, at 2807 Nettleton Street, resulted in the arrest of Frederick Jeffery, who was later convicted of possessing methamphetamine based on false testimony by veteran narcotics officer Gerald Goines, the same cop who had invented drug transactions to justify the search warrants. The second search, at 2811 Nettleton Street, resulted in the seizure of about $3,000 from Andre Thomas, who was detained for several hours but never charged.

Thomas’ loss pales beside what happened to Jeffery, whose sentence was enhanced because of prior convictions. Jeffery got 25 years in prison, which amounted to five years for each gram of meth that Goines falsely linked to him. But while Jeffery was freed last month after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office recommended that his conviction be overturned, Thomas is still waiting to get his money back.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg called Jeffery’s case “a due process disaster.” His arrest and conviction showed how lax supervisors, incurious prosecutors, deferential judges, credulous jurors, and inattentive defense attorneys let bad cops send innocent people to prison. But at least Jeffery was supposed to get due process. Civil asset forfeiture, the system that authorized Goines to steal Thomas’ money, is a due process disaster by design, which somehow does not deter Ogg from taking advantage of it to pad her budget.

Civil forfeiture allows police to seize property based on vague allegations that it is somehow connected to criminal activity. Then the burden is on the owner to get the property back. If he cannot afford to mount a challenge, which may cost more than his property is worth, the government keeps the loot, which is used to supplement the budgets of the same law enforcement agencies that took it.

In Thomas’ case, some of the money seems to have gone missing even before Goines’ narcotics squad initiated the forfeiture process. In an interview with Houston Chronicle reporter St. John Barned-Smith, Thomas insisted that he had $3,000, about $300 more than the cops reported.

If the difference ended up in Goines’ pocket, that would be fully in character for a cop who had a long history of lying to justify searches and arrests, including a 2019 drug raid that killed a middle-aged couple whom Goines falsely accused of selling heroin. That deadly fiasco led to state and federal charges against Goines and a review of his cases by Ogg’s office, which so far has resulted in dozens of dismissals and the exoneration of five defendants, including Jeffery.

But the problems with civil forfeiture, which lets the government con