On Thursday, a Texas board rejected a plea to award George Floyd a posthumous pardon for a 2004 narcotics arrest made by an ex-Houston police officer who is now facing charges and whose case history is being investigated after a fatal drug raid.
In October 2021, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously agreed to recommend that Floyd become only the second Texan since 2010 to be granted a posthumous pardon by the governor.
But before Texas Governor Greg Abbott could make a final decision in the case, the board changed its mind in December, claiming that “procedural errors” had been discovered in its initial recommendation in Floyd’s case and that more than a third of the 67 clemency requests it had forwarded to Abbott needed to be reevaluated.
The board wrote in a letter it sent Thursday to Floyd’s attorney, Allison Mathis, with the Harris County Public Defender’s Office in Houston, “After a full and careful review of the application and other information filed with the application, a majority of the Board decided not to recommend a Full Pardon and/or Pardon for Innocence.”
The board said in its letter that Floyd might reapply for a posthumous pardon after two years. The board’s denial of the request was not explained in the letter.
Attempts to reach Mathis and a paroles board spokeswoman for comment were not immediately successful.
In April 2021, Mathis first filed the request for a pardon.
Floyd, a Black man, was born, raised, and buried in Houston. Derek Chauvin, a former White Minneapolis police officer, was given a 22 1/2-year jail term in June 2021 for shooting Floyd, which sparked a nationwide conversation about race and policing in the United States.
Floyd was detained in Houston in February 2004 by retired police officer Gerald Goines for selling $10 worth of crack in a police operation, years before his murder in May 2020. Floyd subsequently entered a guilty plea to a narcotics offence and received a 10-month state prison term.
In both state and federal court, Goines is now being prosecuted for a fatal drug raid in 2019 that resulted in the deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, 58. Goines is now being charged with two counts of criminal murder and other offences.
Goines is accused of lying to get the warrant to search the couple’s house by saying a confidential informant had acquired heroin there, according to the prosecution. They assert that Goines afterwards claimed there was no informant and that he had purchased the pills on his own. Goines has also been charged by the prosecution with fabricating informants in other instances.
“Because we lacked faith in the validity of his conviction, we backed George Floyd’s pardon. Because it is appropriate, we favour clemency “Kim Ogg, the district attorney for Harris County, stated on Thursday.
Prosecutors have now dropped almost 150 narcotics convictions connected to Goines. A fifth conviction connected to Goines was ordered to be reversed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals earlier this month.
Goines has insisted on his innocence, and his attorney is defending him.