Probe of Old Drug Cases Raises Questions About 2004 George Floyd Arrest

“I know it impacted him and it impacted the family, because he was away, and nobody wants to be locked away in jail for something that they didn’t do,” Ms. Brown said. “There were some important holiday and birthday events he missed because he wasn’t with the family.”

After his release from an East Texas prison in 2013, Mr. Floyd returned to Houston and started rebuilding his life — reconnecting with his children, getting involved in church and speaking out against crime and violence in the Third Ward.

“His story is a redemption story,” said Patrick Ngwolo, the pastor of Resurrection Houston, a church that Mr. Floyd worked with to organize basketball court services. “He was telling the folk who were on the streets — he was a father figure to them and telling them, ‘Hey, this is not the way. We’re trying to do something different.’ He was convincing some of them that there was a better way to do it, and he was living proof that you could do it.”

Overall, prosecutors intend to dismiss the cases of 151 people whose convictions relied on evidence from Mr. Goines, if the criminal appeals court approves, and more dismissals are likely as the investigation continues.

Lawyers said it was not surprising that people had pleaded guilty to crimes they may not have committed. According to court documents, Mr. Mallet said that while he was in jail, he rejected an early plea offer because he did not want to lie and say he was guilty, and that he eventually pleaded guilty because he wanted to get out of jail and would receive credit for time served as part of the deal.

“What are they supposed to do, when it’s one officer against you, and the officer says that’s what happened, and you say, ‘No, it’s not’?” said Celeste Blackburn, who represented another defendant whose conviction was overturned in the review of Mr. Goines’s cases.

No one has determined whether Mr. Floyd’s arrest was improper. Houston prosecutors last year notified Mr. Floyd and his lawyer from the 2004 case that Mr. Goines was under criminal investigation, but Mr. Floyd probably did not receive the letter. It was sent to an old Houston address and he had already moved to Minneapolis, and his lawyer had died in 2015. Ms. Ogg said that prosecutors would likely have agreed to throw out his conviction had Mr. Floyd contacted them.