A responder in Minneapolis on April 20, 2021, after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd.
Morrow Gash / AP
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Morrow Gash / AP
A responder in Minneapolis on April 20, 2021, after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd.
Morrow Gash / AP
HOUSTON – A Texas board on Thursday denied a request George Floyd was pardoned following a 2004 drug arrest by a now-indicted former Houston police officer whose case history was being followed following a deadly drug raid.
The Texas Amnesty Board in October 2021 initially decided unanimously to recommend that Floyd become only the second person in Texas since 2010 to be pardoned by the governor.
But before Texas Governor Greg Abbott could make a final decision on the case, the panel in December reversed its decision, saying a “procedural error” was found in the original recommendation in Floyd’s case and it needs to review more than a third of the group of 67 clemency applications it has sent to Abbott.
“After a complete and careful review of the application and other information submitted in the application, a majority of the Board has decided not to recommend a Full Pardon and/or Amnesty for Innocence,” the council wrote in a letter to Floyd’s attorney on Thursday. , Allison Mathis, with the Harris County Office of Public Protection in Houston.
In its letter, the council said another request for a pardon for Floyd could be resubmitted after two years. The letter did not state why the board denied the request.
The board’s decision was first announced on Thursday by a Marshall Project reporter.
Mathis and a spokesman for the amnesty panel did not immediately return emails or calls seeking comment.
Mathis first submitted a pardon request in April 2021.
Floyd, who was black, grew up and is laid to rest in Houston. In June 2021, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, was convicted 22 and a half years in prison for the killing of Floyd, which led to a national reckoning in America on the issue of race and control.
Years before the May 2020 murder, Floyd was arrested in Houston by former police officer Gerald Goines in February 2004 for selling a $10 crack in a police stabbing. Floyd later pleaded guilty to drug charges and was sentenced to 10 months in state prison.
Goines is currently facing two counts of murder, as well as other charges in both state and federal courts, for a deadly drug raid in 2019 in which Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, 58, were killed.
Prosecutors allege Goines lied to get a search warrant on the couple’s home by alleging that a confidential informant bought heroin there. Goines later said that there were no informants and that he bought the drugs himself, they allege. Prosecutors have accused Goines of also creating informants in other cases.
“We support the pardon of George Floyd because we do not trust the integrity of his conviction. We support clemency because it is appropriate,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, said Thursday.
About 150 drug convictions involving Goines have since been dismissed by prosecutors. Earlier this month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned a fifth conviction involving Goines.
Goines has maintained his innocence and his attorney is fighting the charges.
