| On May 22, 2013, Officer Gerald Goines of the Houston Police Department in Texas arrested 31-year-old Sharay Thomas and charged her with delivery of a controlled substance. In court papers, Goines said that Thomas had sold him less than a gram of cocaine.
Two days after her arrest, Thomas pled guilty to the charge in Harris County Criminal District Court and was sentenced to 180 days in state jail, with credit for the two days she spent in jail prior to entering her plea.
More than five years later, on January 28, 2019, Goines led a raid on a home belonging to 59-year-old Dennis Tuttle and his 58-year-old wife, Rhogena Nicholas. Goines obtained a no-knock warrant after telling a judge that he had set up a controlled buy of narcotics there using a confidential informant. Goines, his partner, Steven Bryant, and other officers broke down the front door of the home and shot a dog that they said lunged at them, which prompted a gun fight. Tuttle and Nicholas were killed.
The Houston Police Department opened an investigation. When Goines’s informant could not be found, Goines eventually admitted there wasn’t an informant.
In April 2019, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dismissed several dozen pending cases involving Goines and Bryant and began reviewing more than 2,200 cases the two officers handled throughout their careers.
In August 2019, Goines was charged with felony murder, and Bryant was charged with tampering with a government record after the raid. By then, Goines and Bryant had retired. Goines was indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2019 on charges that he deprived Tuttle and Nicholas of their civil rights by killing them.
The Conviction Integrity Unit of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office conducted a review of cases between 2009 and 2019 where Goines was a principal player in the arrest. In February 2020, District Attorney Kim Ogg said that the review found 69 defendants who might have been convicted on false evidence presented by Goines. Her office then notified these persons.
Thomas’s attorney filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on March 1, 2024. The petition said her plea was involuntary and that the state used false evidence obtained by Goines to induce that plea.
The district attorney’s office joined with Thomas in recommending that her habeas petition be granted. On May 9, 2023, a judge in Harris County Criminal District Court accepted the joint recommendation and referred the case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
The appellate court, voting 7-2, granted Thomas’s petition and vacated her conviction on December 6, 2023. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Kevin Yeary, joined by Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, said it was premature to grant the habeas petition because the arrest report indicated three other officers were present and the trial court had not heard their testimony on what took place.
The state dismissed Thomas’s charge on July 16, 2024. Officer indicted in 2019 and 2020 in state and federal court for framing people in drug cases. Also indicted for murder.
In September 2024, a jury in Houston convicted Goines of two counts of murder. He was sentenced on October 8, 2024, to 60 years in prison.
– Ken Otterbourg
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