On June 19, 2017, Officer Gerald Goines of the Houston Police Department in Texas arrested 45-year-old Jermal Williams and charged him with possession of a controlled substance.
In court papers, Goines said that Williams had taken part in a drug transaction involving the sale of less than 1 gram of crack cocaine. According to the arrest report, Goines said that he had given a woman a marked $20 bill, and she had given it to the driver of a white Ford Taurus, who handed her a small object that she brought to Goines. Officers said they tailed and stopped the Taurus, which Williams was driving, and found the $20 bill in his pocket. They seized the car and $1,185. The item that the woman gave to Goines field-tested positive for the presence of cocaine.
Williams pled guilty to the charge in Harris County Criminal District Court on September 14, 2017, and was sentenced to three days in the county jail.
Additional information about the group exonerations based on misconduct by Officer Gerald Goines can be found here.
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 gunfight. 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.
Williams, represented by the Harris County Public Defender’s Office, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on November 12, 2024. The petition said his plea was involuntary and that the state used false evidence obtained by Goines to induce that plea. The application also said Williams was unaware of Goines’s pattern of misconduct in other wrongful drug arrests when he entered that plea.
In the petition, Williams said he did not possess any drugs and that he pled guilty because if he went to trial it would have been his word against Goines’s. Williams said the officers took his car and money and never gave them back. He said the conviction had harmed his life in other ways, making it difficult to find a job and housing.
The district attorney’s office joined with Williams in recommending that his habeas petition be granted. On February 12, 2025, 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 granted Williams’s petition and vacated his conviction on June 18, 2025. The state dismissed the charge on August 22, 2025.
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. His other state charges were dismissed after that conviction.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 09-23-2025
