Will George Floyd be pardoned for selling $10 of crack in 2004? Cop who arrested him charged with double murder
Sixteen years before his brutal killing by convicted police officer Derek Chauvin, George Floyd was arrested in his hometown Houston, in February 2004. Former police officer Gerald Goines arrested Floyd on charges of selling $10 worth of crack. He was also sentenced to 10 months in state prison after pleading guilty to a drug charge, according to Daily Mail.
A week after Derek Chauvin was pronounced guilty in the murder of George Floyd, former Houston cop Gerald Goines' case history is now under scrutiny. During a deadly drug raid in January 2019 led by Goines, 59-year-old Dennis Tuttle, and his 58-year-old Rhogena Nicholas were killed. After investigation, Goines was charged with two counts of felony murder.
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Goines was also accused by prosecutors of lying to obtain the search warrant for the deceased couple's house. He had falsely claimed that a confidential informant had bought heroin at Tuttle's house. Later, he admitted that there was in fact no informant and he was the one to bring the drugs himself, according to prosecutors.
Reviewing the posthumous pardon application for #GeorgeFloyd filed by Harris County Public Defender's Office.
— Marcelino Benito (@MarcelinoKHOU) April 26, 2021
They are seeking a pardon of Floyd's 2004 drug charge involving former HPD ofc. Gerald Goines.
The attorney who filed this says it's the right thing to do. #khou11 pic.twitter.com/VjzuoyHzSZ
Was George Floyd's drug conviction true?
More than 160 drug convictions associated with Goines have been dismissed by prosecutors in the past few years. This provided the ground for reconsideration of George Floyd's drug conviction. On Monday, April 26, 2021, a posthumous pardon request on behalf of George Floyd was submitted to Texas officials.
According to Allison Mathis from Harris County Public Defender's Office, Goines allegedly made up a confidential informant in Floyd's case as well. "No one bothered to question the word of a veteran cop against that of a previously-convicted Black man," she stated. She asserted that Floyd probably pleaded guilty to the drug charge to avoid a 25-year sentence owing to his past criminal history.
Between 1997 and 2005, Floyd was convicted of eight crimes for which he served four years in prison. However, the posthumous pardon, if granted, will only be applicable to the drug conviction.
"A pardon 'wouldn't erase the memory, personal or institutional, of this thing that happened to him, or the things that would happen to him later... It would show that the state of Texas is interested in fundamental fairness, in admitting its mistakes, and in working to increase the accountability for police officers who break our trust and their oaths, and harm our people rather than serve them," Mathis wrote in the application for the pardon.