During closing arguments in Gerald Goines’ murder trial on Tuesday, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Keaton Forcht urged jurors to hold the former Houston narcotics officer responsible for the deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were killed in a 2019 drug raid that Goines instigated by describing a heroin purchase that never happened. “Just because you have a badge doesn’t mean you’re above the law,” Forcht said.
Goines targeted Tuttle and Nicholas based on 911 calls from a neighbor, Patricia Garcia, who described them as armed and dangerous drug dealers who had sold her daughter heroin. Garcia, who did not even have a daughter, later admitted she had made the whole thing up, pleading guilty to federal charges related to her false reports.
In the affidavit that Goines filed to support the no-knock warrant that authorized him and his colleagues to break into the middle-aged couple’s home on the evening of January 28, 2019, he claimed a confidential informant had bought heroin from a man at 7815 Harding Street, where Tuttle and Nicholas lived. Goines later confessed he had invented that transaction, although he claimed he personally had bought heroin at the house the evening before the raid. Prosecutors showed that was not true either, presenting evidence that Goines was 20 miles away from the house at the time of the alleged drug purchase and had not visited the location that day.
Goines planned to present two bags of heroin he had obtained elsewhere as evidence of the purported purchase. But that plan went awry after he and his colleagues broke down the door of the house and immediately shot the owners’ dog. Tuttle, who according to prosecutors was napping in a bedroom at the time, responded to the tumult and gunfire by grabbing a revolver and shooting at the intruders, striking four of them, including Goines. The cops responded with a hail of at least 40 bullets, killing Tuttle and Nicholas, who was unarmed but allegedly looked like she was about to grab a gun from an injured officer.
Because of that disaster, the two bags of heroin remained in Goines’ car. “Once you get past tragedy and you get past the disgust, I think you land on irony,” Forcht told the jury. “I think it’s ironic that the only person who possessed heroin in this case was Gerald Goines. He had it in his car for a week.”
In his opening statement, Forcht argued that Tuttle responded to the home invasion as “any normal person” would, defending himself and his wife against assailants he did not realize were police officers. “Evidence will show Gerald Goines was legally responsible for every shot in that house, whether it was from officers or Dennis Tuttle,” he said.
The defense disputed that account. Although the officers were not wearing uniforms, Goines’ lawyers argued that the word police on their tactical gear would have made it clear who they were. The defense also claimed the cops verbally identified themselves as police officers, although the existing audio record does not reflect that.
According to the account that Art Acevedo, then Houston’s police chief, gave at a press conference the night of the raid, the cops “announced themselves as Houston police officers while simultaneously breaching the front door.” Within seconds, they had killed the dog. It would not be surprising if Nicholas and Tuttle missed any announcement amid the chaos and confusion.
Goines’ lawyers, who conceded that he lied to obtain the search warrant, nevertheless argued that Nicholas and Tuttle were responsible for their own deaths. “Had they complied with the officers’ directions,” defense attorney George Secrest told the jury on Tuesday, they would still be alive.
The two murder charges against Goines are based on a statute that applies when someone “commits or attempts to commit a felony” and “in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt…commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.” That charge was inappropriate in this case, the defense argued, because Goines’ underlying felony—producing the fraudulent search warrant affidavit—did not cause the deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas, which they brought on themselves.
While the prosecution emphasized that the cops fired first, Secrest emphasized that Tuttle fired “the first shot at a human being” (as opposed to the dog). “These officers didn’t fire upon anyone until they were fired upon themselves,” he said. “Nobody shot at Dennis Tuttle until he started putting bullets into peoples’ faces and necks.”
Goines’ lawyers also repeatedly noted the personal-use quantities of marijuana and cocaine found in the house, suggesting that Tuttle and Nicholas were involved with drugs after all. Forcht rejected the implication that the couple’s drug use was relevant to Goines’ defense. “The time to investigate those two individuals,” he said, was “before they were murdered, not now.”
In addition to the murder charges, which are each punishable by five years to life in prison, Goines faces a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison. The case is now in the hands of the jury, which began deliberations on Tuesday afternoon.
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