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HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors asked a jury on Monday to sentence a former Houston police officer to life in prison for the murders of a couple during a drug raid that exposed systemic corruption.

Gerald Goines was convicted last month in the deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife Rhogena Nicholas, 58. The couple and their dog were fatally shot when officers burst into their home in January 2019 using a “no-knock” warrant that didn’t require them to announce themselves before entering. Authorities said Goines lied to get the search warrant and falsely portrayed the couple as dangerous drug dealers.

During closing arguments in the trial’s punishment phase, prosecutors told jurors that the deaths of Nicholas and Tuttle were the deadly result of a years-long pattern of corruption by Goines in which he lied about drug arrests and helped people get wrongly convicted. They asked for life in prison, saying he used his badge to prey on people he was supposed to protect.

“No community is cleansed by an officer that uses his badge as an instrument of oppression rather than a shield of protection,” said prosecutor Tanisha Manning.

The investigation that followed the deadly drug raid revealed systemic corruption problems within the police department’s narcotics unit and that officers had made hundreds of errors in cases.

Defense attorneys asked jurors to give Goines the minimum sentence of five years, saying he had dedicated his 34-year career in law enforcement to serving his community and keeping drugs off the streets.

“Our community is safer with someone like Gerald, with the heart to serve and the heart to care,” said Nicole DeBorde, one of Goines’ attorneys.

The jury’s sentencing deliberation was delayed a few days after Goines suffered a medical emergency in the courtroom on Thursday and was taken away in an ambulance.

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors said Goines falsely claimed an informant had bought heroin at the couple’s home from a man with a gun, setting up the violent confrontation in which the couple was killed and four officers, including Goines, were shot and wounded, and a fifth was injured.

Goines’ lawyers had acknowledged the ex-officer lied to get the search warrant but minimized the impact of his false statements. His lawyers had portrayed the couple as armed drug users and said they were responsible for their own deaths because they fired at officers.

Goines’ attorneys argued that the first to fire at another person was Tuttle and not police officers. But a Texas Ranger who investigated the raid testified that the officers fired first, killing the dog and likely provoking Tuttle’s gunfire. And an officer who took part, as well as the judge who approved the warrant, testified that the raid would never have happened had they known Goines lied.

Investigators later found only small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house, and while Houston’s police chief at the time, Art Acevedo, initially praised Goines as being “tough as nails,” he later suspended him when the lies emerged. Goines later retired as the probes continued.

During the trial’s punishment phase, jurors heard from family members of Nicholas and Tuttle, who described them as kind and generous. Tuttle’s son said his father was “pro-police.”

Several of Goines’ family members told jurors he was a good person and had dedicated his life to public service. Elyse Lanier, the widow of former Houston Mayor Bob Lanier, said she had known Goines for 20 years as a “gentle giant.”

One of the people wrongfully convicted based on Goines’ false testimony, Otis Mallet, told jurors that what Goines had done to him had “traumatically disturbed” his life.

Goines also made a drug arrest in 2004 in Houston of George Floyd, whose 2020 death at the hands of a Minnesota police officer sparked a nationwide reckoning on racism in policing. A Texas board in 2022 declined a request that Floyd be granted a posthumous pardon for that drug conviction.

Goines also faces federal criminal charges in connection with the raid, and federal civil rights lawsuits filed by the families of Tuttle and Nicholas against Goines, 12 other officers and the city of Houston are set to be tried in November.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.

The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.

The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.

Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.

The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.

Texas, on the other hand, asked the justices to leave the order in place. Texas said its case is different from Idaho because Texas does have an exception for cases with serious risks to the health of a pregnant patient. At the time the Idaho case began, the state had an exception for the life of a woman but not her health.

Texas pointed to a state supreme court ruling that said doctors do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide an abortion legally.

Doctors, though, have said the Texas law is dangerously vague, and a medical board has refused to list all the conditions that qualify for an exception.

Pregnancy terminations have long been part of medical treatment for patients with serious complications, as way to to prevent sepsis, organ failure and other major problems. But in Texas and other states with strict abortion bans, doctors and hospitals have said it is not clear whether those terminations could run afoul of abortion bans that carry the possibility of prison time.

The Texas case started after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, leading to abortion restrictions in many Republican-controlled states. The Biden administration issued guidance saying hospitals still needed to provide abortions in emergency situations under a health care law that requires most hospitals to treat any patients in medical distress.

Texas sued over that guidance, arguing that hospitals cannot be required to provide abortions that would violate its ban. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, ruling in January that the administration had overstepped its authority.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from a former Texas police officer convicted in the death of a woman who was shot through a window of her home.

The justices did not detail their reasoning, as is typical, and none publicly dissented.

Aaron Dean was convicted of manslaughter in Atatiana Jefferson’s fatal shooting, and he was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison. Dean was originally charged with murder. He argued on appeal that prosecutors should not have been allowed to ask the jury to consider the lesser charge at the end of the trial.

Dean, who is white, shot Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, on Oct. 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a nonemergency police line to report that the front door to Jefferson’s home was open.

It later emerged that Jefferson and her nephew had left the doors open to vent smoke after he had burned hamburgers, and the two were up late playing video games.

Dean’s guilty verdict was a rare conviction of an officer for killing someone who was also armed with a gun.

During the trial, the primary dispute was whether Dean knew Jefferson was armed. Dean testified that he saw her weapon. Prosecutors said the evidence showed otherwise.

Body camera footage showed that Dean and a second officer who responded to the call did not identify themselves as police at the house. Dean and the other officer testified that they thought the house might have been burglarized and they quietly moved into the fenced-off backyard looking for signs of forced entry.

There, Dean, whose gun was drawn, fired a single shot through the window a moment after shouting at Jefferson, who was inside, to show her hands.

Jefferson’ nephew testified that she took out her gun because she believed there was an intruder in the backyard.