When Otis Mallet appeared in court nine years ago, a Harris County judge sent him to prison. On Monday, another one declared him innocent — saying he was the victim of false testimony by a disgraced former Houston police officer — and apologized to him.

“What a miscarriage of justice we have all witnessed with your case, Mr. Mallet,” Judge Ramona Franklin said, before declaring the 64-year-old church deacon “actually innocent” of the drug delivery charge for which he was arrested in 2008 and convicted three years later.

The declaration came a day after a filing by Mallet’s attorney, Jonathan Landers — joined by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg — that, in precise detail, argued the case had been based on information from Gerald Goines, an officer who had lied, failed to disclose crucial evidence and perpetrated a “fraud.”

While the case brought welcome news for Mallet, Ogg said, it also carried “tremendous” significance for the Harding Street investigation and the ongoing probe into Goines and his past casework.

“Now we know he was lying and using the district attorney’s office as a tool to convict people wrongfully as early as 2008,” Ogg said. “Anybody who was convicted as a result of Gerald Goines’ testimony, or involvement in a case that is significant or relevant, will now be given a presumption when they file their writ that Goines’ testimony or evidence in their case was false.”

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In an interview, Goines’ attorney Nicole DeBorde said she looked forward to defending Goines in court and attacked Ogg’s actions as a “media stunt.”

“The DA’s office is using this as way to bolster their position in the other case,” she said, referring to the active felony murder charge Goines faces.

Mayor Sylvester Turner and Houston Police Officers’ Union President Joe Gamaldi did not respond to a request for comment.

Mallet was arrested in 2008 after Goines said that while undercover, he’d bought drugs from Mallet and his brother, Steven. Goines came under scrutiny in January 2019 after leading a drug raid at a home on Harding Street that ended in a shootout and claimed the lives of homeowners Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. Weeks after the raid, police said Goines had lied about a drug buy that was the basis of the raid.

The scandal led to investigations by the Houston Police Department, the FBI and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which ultimately announced it was reviewing 14,000 cases that Goines and his squad had worked on in recent years. Goines now faces murder charges in state court and a raft of other charges in federal court.

In their 20-page joint filing, Ogg and Landers wrote that Goines’ testimony served as the “cornerstone” of prosecutors’ case against Mallet. Goines said he’d bought drugs from Mallet and his brother, before uniformed police swooped in and arrested the two men. The filing also notes serious discrepancies, including the fact Goines never disclosed he’d paid a confidential informant for information leading to the Mallet brothers’ arrests. It also notes that he told jurors he used “police money” to perform the drug buy, but expense reports show he never filed any draw money the month he allegedly paid the Mallets $200 for a “quarter” of crack cocaine. And while he’d testified he’d seen Mallet taking drugs from a blue can, later fingerprint testing failed to find Mallet’s fingerprints on the can Goines said he had handled.

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He was sentenced to eight years and served two years before being paroled.

Mallet declined to talk to reporters after the brief hearing. His attorneys said they were grateful Ogg had agreed with their efforts to have Mallet declared actually innocent and for Franklin’s recommendation to the Court of Criminal Appeals that he be granted full relief from his convictions.

“We are now one step closer to reversing the injustice inflicted upon Mr. Mallet and his family,” Landers said.

Fiesta Missionary Baptist Church Pastor L.J. Comeaux was at the hearing in support of Mallet, who attends the church and serves as a deacon there. He said Mallet and his family have suffered a “lot of prejudices” following his arrest and conviction, but had shown courage and resilience standing up for himself and fighting to have his name cleared and was grateful for the attorneys who had helped him make that happen.

“This is a great example of an injustice and how justice can take its course and things can come out right for a good family,” Comeaux said. “All the evidence was against him, but it’s a shame that it took the death of somebody else for justice to come to him.”

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said that his department would continue working with the DA, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office on investigating Goines’ previous cases. He said that an audit of the Narcotics Division’s “operations, procedures, and policies” has been done and the department will “share our findings and action taken in the upcoming days.”

After Franklin’s finding of actual innocence, the case will head to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which will review the case and have the final say on whether Mallet will receive relief.

The findings mean prosecutors could find themselves handling numerous other drug delivery convictions in which Goines’ testimony was the linchpin, said Elsa Alcala, a former judge who retired in 2018 from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. But the findings don’t mean that other cases will automatically result in an innocence declaration, she said, noting that convictions in cases with testimony from other officers — or other evidence — could be upheld.

Related: Houston police officer Gerald Goines had previous allegations against him

“The Court of Criminal Appeals describes innocence finding as a ‘Herculean burden’ that must be met by the defendant,” she said. “It has only granted a handful of innocence findings in the last several years.”

Attorney Pat McCann, who frequently handles post-conviction cases like Mallet’s, said the amount of evidence in his favor was crucial to meeting that burden — but might be far harder for other defendants to meet in the future.

The case was extraordinary for another reason, he said: Ogg’s statement that defendants in cases Goines had worked would now be granted a presumption that he had lied.

That means, he said, that prosecutors are acknowledging that they have been “scammed” by Goines.

st.john.smith@chron.com

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