| On February 27, 2008, police officers in Houston, Texas, raided a house in search of drugs. One of the officers involved in the raid was Gerald Goines, who had prepared the application requesting a search warrant.
Goines wrote in the application that a confidential informant had performed a controlled buy for the police at the property two days earlier. The informant said the man who sold him drugs was named “Lewis” and was in his mid-40s. The application gave an incorrect address for the suspected house, referring to the property as 5547 Elmlawn Drive, rather than 5603 Elmlawn.
During the raid, police arrested 23-year-old Byron Prophet and several other men. Inside the house, they found 1 gram of phencyclidine, or PCP, and 132 grams of cocaine. They also found a shotgun and a rifle. Goines said he found keys to the house inside Prophet’s pocket and an expired photo ID of Prophet’s in the kitchen, near a scale and the drugs.
Prophet was charged with possession of PCP and possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. The other men, Gary Pugh and Darrel Prophet, Prophet’s uncle, were not charged.
Byron Prophet’s trial began in October 2008 in Harris County District Court.
Goines was the state’s key witness. He testified that prior to the raid, he had conducted surveillance on the house for about 30 minutes and saw Prophet pull up in a white Buick sedan. Twice, Goines said, he saw Prophet unlock the burglar bars covering a door that led from the garage into the house. One time, Goines testified, Prophet remained inside for about eight minutes.
Later, Goines testified, Prophet sat in a chair at the edge of the garage. At various times during the surveillance, according to Goines, two other men, including Prophet’s uncle, showed up at the house to talk with Prophet. Goines said he did not see either man go inside.
Goines testified that the residence was a “dope house,” used for selling and storing drugs. It contained little furniture and no food or personal items. Several rooms were covered in dog feces, and two pit bulls were in the living room when the police came inside. Goines testified that the house had no street numbers, which was a common practice of drug dealers, and explained why the search-warrant application gave an incorrect address.
Goines testified that the key he said he found on Prophet fit the lock on the burglar bars and that Prophet’s ID had been found on the kitchen counter.
One officer involved in the raid, Richard Salter, testified that he did not see Prophet’s ID on the kitchen counter. Another officer, Sergeant John Yencha, testified he did see the ID on the counter. Neither officer had been involved in the initial surveillance of the house.
At the time of the trial, Goines had worked as a narcotics officer for 24 years. As a later court would write about Goines, “He had a fairly successful career as an undercover officer, and, pursuant to his role, he had convinced hundreds, maybe thousands, that he was someone other than an HPD officer, which included lying.”
Byron Prophet testified that Louis Pugh lived at 5603 Elmlawn. At the time of his arrest, Prophet said, he had stopped by the house after seeing his uncle, Darrel Prophet, out front working on a car. Prophet said he needed some mechanical help repairing his dirt bike. He said he went into the garage twice to get some tools.
Prophet testified that Yencha searched him and found nothing in his pockets. He said he had never been inside 5603 Elmlawn and did not possess the drugs or weapons in the house.
Prophet testified that Goines was lying and committing perjury. Prophet said he could not explain how his ID card got inside the house, but he said it was an expired card, with the corner cut off, and he had left it at his grandmother’s house several months earlier, where Darrel might have picked it up. He also testified that he would not have left his ID card next to drugs.
Prophet testified that he did not hang out with Louis Pugh. A police officer testified that she had stopped Prophet for a traffic violation on June 29, 2007. Prophet was driving a white Buick—the same car that Goines said he saw Prophet park in front of the house on Elmlawn—and Pugh was the passenger.
The jury convicted Prophet on the two possession charges on October 15, 2008, and he was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Prophet appealed, arguing there had been insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction, particularly that he had possession of the drugs. The Court of Appeals for the First District of Texas affirmed the conviction on January 14, 2010.
Prophet was released on parole on April 2, 2014.
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. Also 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.
In February 2020, Houston District Attorney Kim Ogg said that a review by her office’s conviction-integrity unit (CIU) of cases Goines played a substantial role in between 2008 and 2019, found 69 people, including Prophet, who might have been convicted on false evidence presented by Goines.
On January 2, 2024, Prophet filed a state petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition said that Goines had testified falsely at trial and provided false information to support the search-warrant application. It said Prophet’s case took place within the time frame of Goines’s established pattern of misconduct.
The Harris County Public Defender’s Office and the district attorney submitted a proposed findings of fact recommending that Prophet’s conviction be vacated. A judge adopted those recommendations on April 30, 2024, and forwarded the case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
The appellate court granted the writ petition on August 21, 2024. “Based on the record, the trial court found that Applicant’s conviction was obtained by false evidence provided by Goines,” the court said. Three judges dissented, writing that the majority ruling paid insufficient attention to the materiality of Goines’s misconduct, as other officers had witnessed the arrest and surveillance of the house.
The state dismissed the case on September 17, 2024.
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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