A hearing to decide whether former Houston police officer Gerald Goines’ long-awaited trial would leave Harris County was upended Wednesday by a disclosure that there are new allegations of missing evidence.
Judge Frank Aguilar listens during a hearing in the 228th District Criminal Court on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse in Houston.The Harris County District Attorney’s Office disclosed the revelations Monday about the possibility of missing evidence after a phone call with the Houston Police Officers’ Union, whose leader, Doug Griffith, recently referred to the homeowners as drug dealers in a news report.
One of Goines’ lawyers, Nicole Deborde Hochglaube, pointed to the disclosure as an indication that the Houston Police Department recognized the Harding Street home as a drug house and that its slain residents, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, were dealing narcotics.“It’s a gross misrepresentation that those officers believed the Tuttles were drug dealers,” one of the prosecutors, Tanisha Manning, said in court. “The union president is the only one.
One officer said the cocaine was on a table in the living room but that he did not know the amount. His partner packaged the drugs, he said, while he transported them to HPD headquarters, according to the disclosure. No one could remember who exactly submitted a drug inventory. Judge Frank Aguilar urged the lawyers to stick to the hearing’s agenda, arguing whether there was grounds for dismissal because of prosecutorial misconduct due to pre-trial publicity and if the trial should be moved elsewhere because of that media attention.
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