This week, nearly six years after Houston cops killed a middle-aged couple falsely accused of selling heroin, a jury began considering the murder case against Gerald Goines, the former narcotics officer who instigated the deadly raid. His lawyers concede that he fabricated the basis for the no-knock warrant that authorized him and his colleagues to break into the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas on January 28, 2019. But they argue that he is not responsible for their deaths and therefore should not have been charged with murder.
Goines, a 34-year veteran who retired after the raid, also faces a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison. That charge is based on a search warrant affidavit in which Goines claimed a confidential informant had purchased heroin from a middle-aged "white male, whose name is unknown," at 7815 Harding Street, where Tuttle and Nicholas lived. The informant supposedly saw a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and a "large quantity of plastic baggies" containing heroin at the house.
