A Texas man is now free after spending almost six years behind bars based on the untruthful testimony of a crooked cop. The then-respected officer lied when he said the homeless man owned a cellphone connected to an important drug bust, an assertion that led to the man being convicted on drug charges and sentenced to almost three decades in prison.
On Friday, July 22, Frederick Jeffery walked out of prison as a free man, after the previous day an investigation determined disgraced ex-Houston police officer Gerald Goines fabricated a story that placed Jeffrey, then a homeless Black man with a lengthy drug addiction history, in the middle of a case he was working on, KHOU 11 reports.
The officer used a broken phone he found in a house he busted as evidence to further connect the man to the crime. He said Jeffery owned it, but his mother continued to scoff at his suggestion, “Fred was homeless. He couldn’t afford a piece of bubble gum.”
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Because of the officer’s dishonesty and the faulty evidence, Jeffery was arrested and convicted in 2018 for possessing five grams of methamphetamine. Despite the small amount, the judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison because of his prior convictions.
Harris County Judge Stacy M. Allen recommended the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reverse Jeffery’s conviction. She said her findings stated the conviction was built on “a pattern of deceit involving fictional drug buys, perjured search warrant affidavits, and false testimony to a jury.”
The recently exonerated and freed man should have never been in jail in the first place his mother, Tina Baldwin, told ABC 13.
In addition to being an addict, Jeffery had a record, making him a prime suspect.
Baldwin said her son’s social status made him a throwaway in the eyes of the law and allowed those in control of his fate to trust a bad cop’s word over his.
She said, “He was homeless. He never owned a house, none. He never had no money. They only went by Goines’ words and his background. That’s how Fred got the time he got.”
