On the afternoon of June 19, 2008, police officers in Houston, Texas, executed a search warrant on a house on the city’s southwestern edge. Officer Gerald Goines of the Houston Police Department had applied for the search warrant that morning and said the premises were controlled by a woman named “Monique.” Goines also said in the application that a confidential informant had gone to the house the day before and bought hydrocodone, using money provided by the police department.
Monique Davis, who was 36 years old and lived in the house with her boyfriend, was present when Goines and five other officers entered the house. They did not find any hydrocodone, but Goines said in an arrest report that Davis led the officers to a safe in a bedroom closet. The officers opened it and found a small quantity of Xanax and Carisoprodol, a prescription muscle relaxer sold under the brand name Soma. Gaines also said the officers found a scale that had a small amount of white powder—less than a tenth of a gram—on top. Goines said the substance field-tested positive for cocaine.
According to Goines, Davis said she took the Xanax and Soma for a medical condition. She was charged with possession of cocaine.
Four days later, Davis pleaded guilty to the charge and received a sentence of six months in the county jail.
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 gun fight. 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, then-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.
On August 14, 2023, Davis filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Harris County Criminal District Court. Represented by Bob Wicoff in the Harris County Public Defender’s Office, Davis said in the petition that Goines’s application for a search warrant was false; there was no confidential informant, and she had not sold drugs from her residence.
She said that she would not have pled guilty had she known of that falsity. In an unsworn declaration, Davis said she had not possessed any drugs and she pled guilty to avoid the possibility of a harsher sentence.
On September 19, 2023, a judge in Harris County recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant Davis’s habeas petition. On February 14, 2024, the appellate court asked for more information on the case. It wanted to know if there was additional evidence supporting Davis’s claim that she didn’t sell drugs to the confidential informant.
The district attorney’s office had already disclosed to Wicoff a copy of Goines’s expense report from June 2008, which did not include any payments to confidential informants. In a disclosure notice filed on February 23, 2024, prosecutors said they were unable to find an offense for that purported buy or an activity sheet related to the alleged transaction.
On March 3, 2024, the Harris County judge again recommended that the appellate court grant Davis’s habeas petition. It said Davis was unaware at the time of her plea about the lack of documentation supporting the search-warrant application.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writ application on February 5, 2025. The state dismissed the charge on March 13, 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.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 04-22-2025
Last Update Date: 04-22-2025
