On a Wednesday afternoon in February 2008, Houston police raided a house at 5603 Elmlawn Drive, where they found a gram of PCP and 132 grams of cocaine. They arrested several men at the property, including Byron Prophet, then 23, who was ultimately convicted of two drug charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
During Prophet’s trial, Gerald Goines, a narcotics officer who had been employed by the Houston Police Department (HPD) for 24 years, testified that he saw the defendant enter the house twice through a door from the garage, unlocking the bars covering the entrance with a key that was later found in his pocket. Prophet testified that he had never been inside the house and had no key.
Although the jury believed Goines, a deadly 2019 drug raid that he instigated by fabricating a heroin sale revealed that he was completely untrustworthy. Thanks to the belated scrutiny triggered by that scandal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Prophet’s convictions in 2024. But Prophet, who was released on parole in 2014, had already served nearly six years in prison based on the unquestioned word of a drug cop with a long history of lying to obtain search warrants, justify arrests, and secure convictions. The case illustrates how the war on drugs invites police mendacity that may go undetected for years thanks to lax supervisors and credulous courts…