In 2004, George Floyd was one of scores of people arrested on the word of a Houston narcotics officer, Gerald M. Goines, who said he had watched Mr. Floyd hand over a “dime rock” of crack cocaine during an undercover drug buy.
But after a botched drug raid ended with the death of a couple in their Houston home in 2019, Mr. Goines, who is now retired, became the center of a massive policing scandal that resulted in felony charges against nine officers.
Prosecutors say Mr. Goines fabricated evidence to conduct the raid, including by inventing an informant, and have charged him with two counts of felony murder. He also faces federal civil rights charges, but has denied the allegations.
Now the state parole board has recommended a posthumous pardon in the Houston case for Mr. Floyd, whose killing during an unrelated arrest in Minneapolis in 2020 touched off a national debate over race…
