(CN) — Both sides presented their closing arguments Tuesday morning in the trial of former Houston Police officer Gerald Goines, the leader of the team on the botched “Harding Street raid” that left two homeowners dead and four officers injured in February 2019.
Goines faces two counts of tampering with a government document by lying to a judge to obtain the no-knock search warrant for the raid. Prosecutors have also charged Goines with two counts of felony murder over the deaths of the two homeowners, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, which the defense has continuously argued amounts to overcharging.
In a courtroom packed wall-to-wall with observers, prosecutor Keaton Forcht told jurors that Goines’s decisions, actions and most of all his lies led directly to Tuttle and Nicholas’s deaths.
“Justice is most necessary in the wake of injustice,” Forcht said. “And the deaths of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle are a grave, grave injustice.”
Evoking the blindfolded statue of Lady Justice that sits atop so many courthouses, Forcht said that statue “stands for the principle that just because you have a badge doesn’t mean you’re above the law. Just because you struggle with depression or mental illness doesn’t mean you’re below the law.”
Over the 10 days of testimony, Forcht and co-counsel Tanisha Manning presented phone records, testimony from other officers, and Goines’ own words to show that he had lied about using a confidential informant to buy drugs at the Harding Street property the day before the raid. Goines eventually admitted while in the hospital that he did not use an informant that day.
“Throughout this case, Gerald Goines has manipulated a judge, a sergeant, a lieutenant, a friend. Do you think you are off limits?” Forcht told the jury later in his arguments. “See, it wasn’t enough for Mr. Goines to murder those two individuals. He has to murder their reputation, too.”
Forcht ended on the question of responsibility.
“When an officer lies, and he forces a group of armed peace officers into a home, and those officers knock down the front door, and they shoot first and kill the family dog, and then they shoot and kill and unarmed wife, and then they shoot multiple times in the back of the husband, one through the back of his head and out of his mouth, who is responsible? Is it us, the homeowner? Or is it the liar that set this all up?”
Goines’ attorneys George Secrest and Nicole Deborde conceded their client had lied to obtain the warrant. But they held firm that Goines was not legally responsible for the two deaths.
Secrest, speaking before Deborde, made the same argument on overcharging, blaming the media coverage of the raid’s aftermath and the politics surrounding the Houston Police Department.
“Now, you’re gonna be angry with Gerald for his false statements in the affidavit. I get it, I get it. As an officer of the court, I don’t like it at all. But the question is what is Gerald guilty of?” Secrest said.
Based in large part on the testimony of the Texas Rangers’ investigator and one Houston Police investigator, the defense argued Tuttle and Nicholas were responsible for their own deaths — Tuttle for opening fire at the officers and Nicholas for attempting to grab a wounded officer’s weapon.
“The evidence shows that the complainants in this case would not have died had they complied with the officer’s directives. It’s as easy as that,” Secrest said.
He also blasted the prosecution for not acknowledging the facts of the case. “Eighty seconds. That’s all it took: 80 seconds in that house. They don’t wanna talk about the 80 seconds.”
Deborde called the prosecution’s case “a fiction.
“For almost six years, this district attorney’s office has had the ability and the responsibility to investigate, to talk to witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the events, and to decide what charges would be appropriate to bring in this case after doing that. And they elected, some time in 2020, early, to charge Mr. Goines with murder,” she said. “That is not the correct charge.”
Deborde took aim at the prosecution’s burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. She noted the evidence presented in trial, from Mr. Tuttle’s firearm and his use of it that day to the 911 call several weeks earlier. And in recounting the details of the raid, she presented the jury with a mannequin dressed in full HPD body armor and demonstrated how and where Mr. Tuttle shot the four officers.
“You have an option to end this madness today, when you go back into that jury room: to find Gerald Goines not guilty of murder. Because he is not the cause of the deaths of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle,” Deborde said. “And I would submit to you that if you are mad at Gerald Goines, there are other consequences.”
On rebuttal, Manning lambasted the defense’s closing statements.
“It is offensive that six years later, six years after the fact, we are still trying to justify a falsified search warrant. It is highly offensive that we take the facts and the evidence, and we twist them around as lawyers to justify a falsified search warrant,” Manning said, adding later: “If you want to feel sorry for someone, I submit to you, Gerald Goines is not the person that you need to feel sorry for.”
The jury ended the first day of deliberation without returning a verdict.