Jurors Weigh Murder Charges Against Former Houston Drug Cop Who Lied to Justify a Deadly Home Invasion
During closing arguments in Gerald Goines’ murder trial on Tuesday, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Keaton Forcht urged jurors to hold the former Houston narcotics officer responsible for the deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were killed in a 2019 drug raid that Goines instigated by describing a heroin purchase that never happened. “Just because you have a badge doesn’t mean you’re above the law,” Forcht said.
Goines targeted Tuttle and Nicholas based on 911 calls from a neighbor, Patricia Garcia, who described them as armed and dangerous drug dealers who had sold her daughter heroin. Garcia, who did not even have a daughter, later admitted she had made the whole thing up, pleading guilty to federal charges related to her false reports.
In the affidavit that Goines filed to support the no-knock warrant that authorized him and his colleagues to break into the middle-aged couple’s home on the evening of January 28, 2019, he claimed a confidential informant had bought heroin from a man at 7815 Harding Street, where Tuttle and Nicholas lived. Goines later confessed he had invented that transaction, although he claimed he personally had bought heroin at the house the evening before the raid. Prosecutors showed that was not true either, presenting evidence that Goines was 20 miles away from the house at the time of the alleged drug purchase and had not visited the location that day.
Goines planned to present two bags of heroin he had obtained elsewhere as evidence of the purported purchase. But that plan went awry after he and his colleagues broke down the door of the house and immediately shot the owners’ dog. Tuttle, who according to prosecutors was napping in a bedroom at the time, responded to the tumult and gunfire by grabbing a revolver and shooting at the intruders, striking four of them, including Goines. The cops responded with a hail of at least 40 bullets, killing Tuttle and Nicholas, who was unarmed but allegedly looked like she was about to grab a gun from an injured officer.
Because of that disaster, the two bags of heroin remained in Goines’ car. “Once you get past tragedy and you get past the disgust, I think you land on irony,” Forcht told the jury. “I think it’s ironic that the only person who possessed heroin in this case was Gerald Goines. He had it in his car for a week.”
In his opening statement, Forcht argued that Tuttle responded to the home invasion as “any normal person” would, defending himself and his wife against assailants h
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