Murder trial opens for former Houston police officer over role in botched drug raid

HOUSTON (CN) — Over five years after a narcotics raid left two homeowners dead and four officers wounded, the trial of the Houston police officer accused of falsely signing a no-knock search warrant began Monday.

Gerald Goines is charged with tampering with a government document and two counts of felony murder, after he reportedly lied to the judge to obtain the warrant. Prosecutors drew connections between Goines lying to the judge and the 2019 deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58.

“But for Gerald Goines lying on that search warrant, none of this is happening,” Keaton Forcht, prosecuting attorney for Harris County, told the jury.

Prosecutors argue that Goines had lied to the judge about the use of a confidential informant, saying that phone records placed Goines on the opposite side of Houston from Harding Street where Tuttle and Nicholas lived for the entire day he supposedly told an informant to purchase heroin from Tuttle and Nicholas.

“If you take Gerald Goines out of this equation, at 5:27 p.m. on January 28, 2019, there is no unmarked white van pulling up on Harding Street. There [are] no officers pulling out of that van fully armed. No shots ring out. Dennis Tuttle, Rhogena Nicholas, and their dog, Star, are all peacefully at home," Forcht said.

Defense attorney Nicole Deborde Hochglaube conceded the point about his lies to the judge but argued he could not be held responsible for murder.

“And while it is true that you are not gonna be happy with Gerald Goines for some of the things that he said that were not true, in that affidavit and later at the hospital in between nine surgeries and a raging MRSA infection, where he stayed for 24 days after being shot in the face by Dennis Tuttle … You’re gonna be unhappy with him, he didn’t murder anyone. He is not legally responsible for murder," she said.

She said that it was Tuttle and Nicholas, not Goines, who were legally responsible for their own deaths.

“You will learn from the lab report that every single shot fired by Dennis Tuttle landed in a deadly spot that was unprotected by these officers from close range. You will learn from the lab that Rhogena Nicholas had gunshot residue on her hands,” Hochglaube said, “Which means that she was either successful in reaching [Officer] Medina, who lay unconscious on the couch, as she refused to follow commands and grabbed the gun, or was in close enough proximity to it as it was being fired that those gunshot residue particles were deposited on her hands. So science tells us that’s what happened.”

Prosecutors then called three witnesses, starting with Sarah Sanchez, a neighbor of Tuttle and Nicholas, who described the house and also said that Nicholas did not get along with another neighbor, Patricia Garcia, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to lying to police in the 911 call that first sparked the police investigation into Tuttle and Nicholas.

Houston Police Department Officer Richard Morales, who first responded to Garcia’s 911 call, testified that he had questioned the plan to use a flashbang in the raid, knowing there was a large dog in the house, and ultimately convinced Goines to change the plan.

The defense team presented him an HPD Internal Affairs report in which Morales reported hearing “police” and “search warrant” before the first shots were fired, though both defense and prosecution noted that Morales was on the perimeter team and not with the narcotics squad that entered the home.

The day concluded with testimony from a third witness, HPD Officer Nicole Blankenship-Reeves, who had also investigated the initial 911 call and who had forwarded the case to the narcotics division.

The fallout from the Harding Street raid has gone far beyond Goines himself —12 other officers were previously indicted by a grand jury over the Harding Street raid, but the indictment was thrown out. Many of those officers still face charges of false overtime claims.

Beyond that, the HPD narcotics unit “Squad 15” has faced a wide range of misconduct and corruption accusations in the years since the raid.

21 criminal convictions tied to Goines from 2008 to 2018 have been thrown out by judges, out of nearly 1400 that were reviewed, and several of those exonerated people have filed civil suits against Goines and other HPD officials for civil rights violations.

In addition, Tuttle and Nicholas’ families sued the city of Houston back in 2021. City officials have set aside nearly three million dollars to defend Houston Police Department and former HPD Chief Art Acevedo.

The trial is expected to last several weeks and will continue Tuesday.