HOUSTON, TX (WCCO) – As the verdict was announced one week ago and former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, the first reaction of many in the Twin Cities was celebration or even relief that a measure of justice was served.
But outside of Minnesota, another effort toward justice is underway: a posthumous pardon for a 2004 drug case in Texas.
For a public defender, it was a nightmare scenario.
There was no reason to doubt the word of an experienced Houston Police Department Drug Task Force officer. The defendant was a Black man with prior convictions, including drug offenses.
The person representing Floyd in that 2004 drug case was faced with two options: plead guilty or go to trial, potentially risking Floyd being labeled a habitual offender and receiving a minimum sentence of 25 years.
Floyd pleaded guilty and served 10 months in a Texas State Jail facility.
The Harris County District Attorney identified dozens of people who may have been convicted on false evidence. There have been two exonerations. In 2019, a letter from the DA’s office was sent to a prior Houston address to notify Floyd that Goines was under criminal investigation.
Attorney Allison Mathis with the Harris County Public Defender’s Office said it’s possible Floyd was a victim of Goines, too.
Because Floyd is dead, the usual remedy of writ of habeas corpus is not available, which is why Mathis is attempting to secure just the second posthumous pardon in Texas history. The first and only was in 2010 when Gov. Rick Perry pardoned a man named Tim Cole who died in prison in 1999 for the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech University student. DNA evidence showed Cole was wrongfully convicted.
“I don’t think this (Floyd) conviction has integrity,” Mathis said. “And I think it’s important that since we have this spotlight in George Floyd right now, we highlight that this wasn’t an isolated event even in George Floyd’s life. Police brutality was not something that happened to him once. It was something that happened systematically to him throughout his life.”
