George Floyd's 2004 Crack Conviction Called Into Question by Prosecutor
Texas prosecutors are re-examining a former Houston police officer’s arrest of George Floyd on a minor drug charge in 2004.
Floyd, who died on May 25 in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck for roughly nine minutes during an arrest, served time in a state jail for selling what Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has described as $10 worth of crack, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to Ogg, the scandal-ridden former police officer who made the 2004 arrest, Gerald Goines, “was likely lying in this case.”
“Gerald Goines’ arrest of George Floyd reveals an offense report that is incomplete and suspect,” Ogg said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.
“I have instructed prosecutors to verify the facts in this offense report.”
She pointed to several red flags, including the fact that Goines was the only police officer witness.
“These are not cases that we would take or that we would accept for charges under my administration,” Ogg told The Wall Street Journal.
Floyd’s case is just one of many being reviewed in the wider investigation of cases involving Goines.
Goines has also been charged with murder and tampering with a government record by lying to obtain a search warrant in 2019 that lead to a botched drug raid in which two people were killed. He has pleaded not guilty in the pending criminal case.
The review of Goines’ cases is part of an effort to provide relief to people who may have been wrongfully accused, arrested or convicted.
“It means that we’ll move that marker back and we’ll look at even more defendants convicted earlier than we have previously,” Ogg told The Wall Street Journal.
Ogg’s office has asked a judge to dismiss one case and overturn two convictions. Her office has also asked judges to appoint lawyers to 152 cases that need to be overturned.
Goines’ attorney, Nicole DeBorde, has questioned the timing of the review of Floyd’s case.
Ogg, a Democrat, is up for re-election in November and Floyd has become a household name as Black Lives Matter protests have sprung up across the country in response to perceived racial inequality.
“Regarding Ogg’s resurrecting of a decade and a half old case without a shred of new information — this is a transparent and opportunistic effort to capitalize on Floyd’s murder,” DeBorde told the AP.
“This is nothing but a political press move on her part,” she added to The Wall Street Journal.
Ogg’s office believes that Floyd never received the March 2019 letter about the review of his case because it was sent to his last known address in Houston.
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