Gerald Goines sentencing: Jury deliberations underway after medical emergency halts trial
Houston - The sentencing phase of the murder trial for Gerald Goines continued this morning with Goines recently released from the hospital. Closing arguments were stopped on Thursday, and Goines was rushed from the courthouse by ambulance.
Jurors are trying to determine what punishment former Houston Police Department Narcotics Officer Gerald Goines should receive after the jury found him guilty of Felony Murder two weeks ago. They've been deliberating since around 10:00 a.m. after Closing Arguments ended.
Goines faces from five years to life in prison.
RELATED: Goines trial on hold after medical emergency
"This is perhaps the worst case of abuse of the badge that Harris County has ever seen," says Prosecutor Tanisha Manning.
Jurors weren't told it was Goines suffering a medical emergency that suddenly stopped the trial last week and that he was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. When Manning continued her closing argument she told jurors, "Before I was interrupted" and she continued, saying Goines was a "corrupt cop" who had a "pattern of misconduct" long before January 2019 when he lied to secure a search warrant of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle's Southeast Houston home on Harding Street. It was a drug raid that ended with four officers shot and the couple killed.
"No community is cleansed by an officer who uses his badge as an instrument of oppression rather than a shield of protection. Lawlessness in the guise of justice is the lowest form of hypocrisy," says Manning.
"What was found in that rolling mobile pharmacy that Gerald Goines calls a police vehicle? You tell me why does Gerald Goines have a car full of empty baggies and scales, drugs from 2016, other people's ID's, other people's pill bottles, multiple guns?" Prosecutor Keaton Forcht asked jurors during his closing argument.
"By day or by night, depending on what was tasked to him, Gerald Goines went for decades into neighborhoods that you and I might not go into to do the best he could," Goines Attorney Nicole DeBorde told jurors.
"In April of 2008, Gerald Goines planted drugs on Otis Mallet...That's a conscious decision to wrongfully convict someone in our community...All Gerald Goines knew is he planted enough drugs on (Mallet) that the potential sentence was a life sentence," Forcht talked extensively in his closing about Mallet.
MORE COVERAGE:
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- Gerald Goines found guilty of murders in 2019 raid
- Punishment phase for Gerald Goines trial underway
- Harding Street trial focuses on 'no-knock' warrant
- Judge says warrant wouldn't have been signed if he'd known lies were told to obtain it
So did Manning, adding, "That's when we see the first crack in (Goines) crumbling foundation of corruption."
"For 34 years that big, gentle man received outstanding evaluation, after outstanding evaluation, after outstanding evaluation for the work he was doing to try to take drugs off of our streets," DeBorde reminded jurors.
"Nine different times I walked in front of you holding a different search warrant affidavit falsified by that defendant... All nine of them had a paragraph in there about a weapon being used during a drug transaction because it's not enough for that man (Goines) to just go into our home unsolicited, he wants to do it in the most violent and most ruthless way possible with a no-knock warrant. He lied nine different times about guns being used... Nine times someone was arrested, charged with a felony, put in a police vehicle, taken to jail and some of those people were falsely convicted on the back of Gerald Goines," Forcht told jurors.
"Do we wish he had not made those decisions about what he put in the affidavit? Yes, we do, but we also know from the facts and the circumstances that we heard from the trial that he knew he was going into a house where he could be shot at. There were a lot of guns," Goines attorney told jurors regarding the lies he told to secure the Harding Street search warrant.
"Gerald Goines was falsely writing search warrant affidavits on a regular basis in 2018 and 2019 and knocking down doors, and it can't be ignored it was almost always in the same neighborhood he was paid to protect...He's taken freedoms. He's ended careers. He has taken the trust and faith our community had in our own police department," says Forcht.
"The prosecution had the opportunity to bring you every shred of ugly piece of information that they could possibly dig up about this 60-year-old, broken, destroyed human being after a 34-year career at the Houston police department in the community he loved," says DeBorde.
"2019 is when he becomes exposed for the monster that we know he has been. Preying upon these communities that he was supposed to protect," Manning also added in her closing argument.
"As Dennis Tuttle marched across his living room toward the door where uniformed police officers, and Gerald was as close as I am now to Dennis Tuttle as you are in that jury box. Gerald moved forward with his arms outstretched to pick up his fellow officer off the floor and was shot in the face," DeBorde told jurors.
At that, Manning responded in her closing argument, "He is no hero, and he certainly is no victim in this...The real victims, the one officer who's now paralyzed. The true victims, the Nicholas family, the Tuttle family, Rhogena Nicholas, Dennis Tuttle."
Forcht added, "Cedell Lovings, he's serving a life sentence in a wheelchair because Gerald Goines would rather decimate the Third Ward, than protect it".
"Is there something we didn't say about Gerald to show you his heart and what was in his head?...The community will forever more know Gerald as a murderer...He is 60 but he's an old 60. His health is destroyed. Anything this man gets even close to ten years is a death sentence. Five years, which he could serve every day, is more than enough, along with the conviction he already has, to punish a man who can never and will never stop punishing himself until he takes his very last breath...Our community is safer with someone like Gerald, with a heart to serve and a heart to care. Long prison sentences are for people we are afraid of," DeBorde said in her closing.
"That's exactly right. That man should strike fear in every single one of us because he's done it to a community time after time, after time...All of the lies, all of the cheating, you have to ask yourself and we still to this day do, why? Why? Is it truly just a desire to pervert justice or is it something more? Is it actually evil?" Forcht asked in his closing argument.
"If he can use his police badge to take life, you can use your jury badge to give life," Manning urged jurors.
"Anything less than a life sentence gives Gerald Goines hope. It's the same hope that he, during his career, day after day took from people less fortunate than him," Forcht told jurors before they began deliberating.
Defense attorneys maintain Goines spent most of his life taking drugs off Houston streets and coaching kids in underprivileged communities, not only mentoring them but also buying sports equipment for children who couldn't afford it, as well as picking them up and dropping them off for games and practices.
"His whole life has been a masquerade. There are two sides to Gerald Goines. Gerald Goines is a nightmare because he's a living, breathing example of what it means to be corrupt with power...this courtroom is filled, both sides, filled with people serving a life sentence at Gerald Goines hands," says Forcht.
Goines was two weeks from retiring when that deadly no-knock raid left Nicholas and Tuttle dead on January 28, 2019. Although Goines never drew his gun, he was found guilty of Felony Murder for "causing the deaths" by lying to secure the search warrant.
Jurors are still deliberating.