Former cop charged in Houston drug raid deaths of couple awaits jury verdict

HOUSTON — A jury began deliberating Tuesday on the fate of a former Houston police officer accused of being responsible for the deaths of a couple in 2019 during a raid that sparked an investigation that exposed systemic corruption within the police department’s narcotics unit.

Gerald Goines is charged with two counts of murder in the January 2019 deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife Rhogena Nicholas, 58. Goines has pleaded not guilty.

The couple and their dog were fatally shot after officers stormed their home using a no-knock search warrant that did not require them to announce themselves before entering.

Jurors could also convict Goines on a lesser charge of tampering with a government record, based on allegations that he forged the search warrant used to justify the raid on the couple’s home.

The jury deliberated for about three hours Tuesday afternoon before recessing for the day. Deliberations are expected to resume Wednesday.

In closing arguments in a trial that began Sept. 9, prosecutors told jurors that Goines, 59, fabricated a confidential informant and manipulated people to obtain a search warrant for the couple’s home that falsely portrayed them as dangerous drug dealers.

Prosecutor Keaton Forcht told jurors that everything that happened in the home, including the couple’s deaths and the officers’ injuries, “was a direct result” of the falsified search warrant and Goines’ lies. During the search, four officers were shot and wounded and a fifth was injured.

“The deaths of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle are a grave, grave injustice,” said Forcht of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Goines’ attorneys have admitted that the former cop lied to obtain a search warrant, but they have tried to downplay the impact of his false statements. They have said Nicholas and Tuttle are responsible for their own deaths.

Tuttle and Nicholas “did not die because there was a bad warrant and officers entered their home,” but because they did not listen to officers’ orders and fired at them, putting the officers’ lives in danger, said George Secrest, one of Goines’ attorneys.

“You can hate Gerald…but he’s not guilty of murder,” Secrest said.

Nicole DeBorde, another attorney for Goines, suggested to jurors that Tuttle’s history of mental health problems may have played a role in the shooting. She also suggested that evidence showed the couple were armed and dangerous drug dealers.

But prosecutor Tanisha Manning told jurors that Tuttle was a military veteran with a long history of medical problems and had every right to fire his weapon and defend his home from people who broke through his front door.

Manning said prosecutors were not placing blame on other officers in the home who were unaware of the falsified search warrant and were justified in defending themselves.

“The only person responsible for that volley of bullets was Gerald Goines,” Manning said.

Investigators said they found only small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the home.

At trial, Jeff Wolf, a Texas park ranger who investigated the shooting, testified that the officers opened fire as they entered the home and shot the couple’s dog. Wolf said the gunshots and Nicholas’s yelling at the officers likely prompted Tuttle to come out of his bedroom and open fire on the officers.

Goines’ attorneys said the officers identified themselves before entering the home, but Wolf testified the couple may not have heard that before the gunfire erupted.

Goines’ attorneys argued at trial that it was Tuttle, not the officers, who first shot another person.

An officer who participated in the raid and the judge who approved the search warrant testified that the raid would never have happened if they had known that Goines had lied to obtain the warrant.

If convicted of murder, Goines faces life in prison.

The investigation into the drug raid also revealed allegations of systemic corruption.

A dozen officers linked to the narcotics squad that carried out the raid, including Goines, were later indicted on other charges following a corruption investigation. In June, a judge dropped charges against some of them.

Since the raid, prosecutors have reviewed thousands of cases handled by the narcotics unit.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned at least 22 convictions related to Goines, who also faces federal charges.

One of the other cases related to Goines that remains under scrutiny is the 2004 drug arrest of George Floyd in Houston, whose death in 2020 at the hands of a Minnesota police officer sparked a national reckoning over racism in policing. In 2022, a Texas board rejected a request for a posthumous pardon for Floyd for his drug conviction stemming from his arrest by Goines.

Federal civil rights lawsuits filed by Tuttle and Nicholas’ families against Goines and 12 other officers involved in the raid and the city of Houston are scheduled to go to trial in November.