The number of criminal cases handled by embattled ex-Houston Police Officer Gerald Goines may be far more than the several hundred prosecutors are already reviewing, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of county data.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said last month her office had flagged about 1,400 of Goines’ cases for a closer look after a botched drug raid left two dead and five officers injured. But district clerk records show the since-retired lawman was the primary complainant in nearly 1,100 cases in just the last 20 years, a fraction of the time he spent with the Houston Police Department.

“It’s possible there’s more — he was an officer for 35 years,” said Nicole DeBorde, the defense attorney representing Goines. “But the reality is that there’s not going to be any way to go back and re-evaluate some of those cases. They don’t maintain records that long; the labs don’t keep drugs that long.”

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On top of that, it’s unclear how far the district attorney’s office is going back with their case reviews because prosecutors won’t talk specifics or clarify the parameters, though officials did say they expect to find more cases handled by Goines and fellow officer Steven Bryant, who has also since retired under investigation.

“We are reviewing approximately 2,200 cases at this point in which Officers Goines or Bryant have been identified as the arresting officer, a witness, or had some other role,” spokesman Dane Schiller said. “We expect that the number will increase as the investigation continues and more cases are identified.”

The 54-year-old case agent came under scrutiny earlier this year after police accused him of lying on the search warrant affidavit used to justify the raid at 7815 Harding St. When officers burst in the home on Jan. 28 in search of a heroin dealer, they kicked off a shootout that left dead Navy veteran Dennis Tuttle and his wife Rhogena Nicholas.

Five officers were hurt, and Goines spent weeks in the hospital recovering after he was shot in the neck. But the raid only turned up marijuana and a small amount of cocaine, and the slain couple’s friends and family came forward to say they weren’t drug dealers.

Days later, police investigating the shooting realized they couldn’t find the confidential informant behind the drug buy that sparked the raid. When asked about the snitch, Goines first named one informant and then another, but none of his known informants admitted having any role in the alleged buy on Harding Street, according to court filings.

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Those revelations prompted a police investigation and attracted the attention of the FBI, which last month launched its own civil rights probe into the matter. The swirl of concerns surrounding the squad’s handling of the raid and the warrant pushed the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to undertake the massive case review, which led to more than 2,000 notices sent to defendants and their attorneys.

Initially, prosecutors said they planned to look back only at the cases Goines handled, but weeks later the case review expanded to include some 800 cases handled by Bryant, who was also allegedly involved in the supposed undercover buy.

Citing the ongoing investigation, officials declined to say whether they were drawing their case list from district clerk data, from district attorney’s office data, from Houston police records, or from some combination of the three. They’ve also declined to say how far back their case list goes, though previously Ogg committed to seeing that “justice is done” in “every” case.

Currently, the district attorney’s list of 1,400 cases includes those for which Goines was a witness, as well as those for which he was the arresting officer, while the 1,100 cases in district clerk data include only cases for which he was the primary complainant.

“I would imagine that the number is much higher than that,” said Nathan Hennigan, a former Harris County narcotics prosecutor now doing defense work. “But it’s not something that would be easily ascertained.”

The most likely method of identifying Goines’ cases, according to Hennigan, would be through Houston police offense reports. But if Goines helped out on a case and didn’t write the main report or a supplement, there may not be any paper trail indicating he was there, Hennigan said. And, in the course of Goines’ career, both the district attorney’s office and Houston police have switched computer systems, which could complicate records searches with either agency.

Earlier this month, prosecutors stymied a Chronicle records request for a full list of Goines’ cases and referred the matter to the attorney general for a ruling on whether they were legally required to release the information. Instead, the Chronicle relied on district clerk records to identify 1,100 cases.

Even if the number of identified cases grows, it’s not clear what remedies are practical for decades-old cases. At this point, there may be nothing left to investigate, and post-conviction drug defendants aren’t entitled to court-appointed attorneys.

“The cases themselves in the first place were just his word, and the dope’s all been destroyed,” Hennigan said. “When I was there (at the district attorney’s office), if there were a bunch of cases called into question, they’d send a letter to the defendant and to their lawyer and just wash your hands and you’re done.”

So far, Ogg’s office has sent out hundreds of letters but it’s not yet clear what else the review process might entail.

keri.blakinger@chron.com

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