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What criminal charges did George Perry Floyd face in 1998 and 2004?

Checked on November 12, 2025
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Executive Summary

George Perry Floyd was convicted on theft charges in 1998 and on a drug‑delivery charge in 2004: the 1998 convictions stem from two separate thefts (September 25 and December 9, 1998) that together produced a jail term of roughly 10 months and 10 days, and the 2004 arrest (February 6, 2004) was for intent to deliver less than one gram of cocaine (a low‑level drug‑distribution felony) that resulted in a state‑jail sentence and later drew scrutiny when a Texas board denied a posthumous pardon. These details are drawn from compiled summaries of Harris County court records and reporting that reviewed Floyd’s criminal history and the 2004 conviction specifically [1] [2] [3] [4].

1. How the 1998 theft convictions are recorded and summarized

Court‑record summaries and fact‑checking compilations list two distinct theft convictions for George Perry Floyd in 1998: one dated September 25, 1998, and another dated December 9, 1998. The two thefts were treated as separate offenses in Harris County and were sentenced in combination to approximately 10 months and 10 days behind bars. These particulars appear in aggregated criminal‑record summaries that have been reproduced in public background checks and encyclopedia‑style entries; those records present the sequence and sentencing length as a factual aggregation of Harris County filings rather than a narrative of incident circumstances [1] [2]. The sourcing aligns across independent summaries that catalog pre‑2020 convictions.

2. The 2004 drug arrest: charge, date, and sentence

The 2004 incident that is consistently documented in reporting and record summaries occurred on February 6, 2004, when Floyd was arrested in Houston for a drug‑related offense characterized as intent to deliver under one gram of cocaine. Reporting and court summaries indicate Floyd pleaded guilty to a drug charge and received a state‑jail sentence of roughly 10 months, a punishment consistent with low‑level distribution convictions under Texas law at the time. Major news reports that later examined this conviction in the context of requests for posthumous clemency frame it as a small‑scale drug sale rather than a large trafficking case [1] [4] [2].

3. Official review and the denied posthumous pardon

After Floyd’s death, Texas authorities reviewed his 2004 conviction in response to petitions for clemency. A Texas board declined to grant a posthumous pardon for the 2004 conviction, a decision covered in contemporaneous reporting and official summaries. The board’s denial focuses on the record of conviction: the underlying plea and sentence remain on the record absent an executive pardon or other vacatur. Coverage framed the denial as an administrative conclusion about the legal record rather than a reassessment of broader social or political context surrounding Floyd’s later death [3] [4]. Reporting emphasized the narrow legal criterion used by the board in making its decision.

4. Points of corroboration and limits in publicly cited sources

Multiple independent compilations—encyclopedic entries and investigative summaries—converge on the same core facts for 1998 and 2004: two theft convictions in 1998 with combined jail time near 10 months and 10 days, and a 2004 drug‑distribution conviction tied to selling a small quantity of crack or cocaine for which Floyd served roughly 10 months. However, not every secondary source lists the same level of detail about dates or sentence math; some reports summarize the conviction history more generally as “a long criminal record” without enumerating dates. The most consistent, detailed elements across summaries remain the specific 1998 dates and the February 6, 2004 drug arrest and its outcome [1] [2] [5].

5. Why these details matter in public discussion and where gaps remain

The recorded 1998 and 2004 convictions have been central to debates about character, legal consequences, and policy responses in the post‑2020 public discourse. Fact compilations and news reports present the convictions as part of a verifiable court record, and administrative bodies have treated the convictions as intact legal facts when considering pardons. Gaps remain in publicly accessible narrative detail about the circumstances of the 1998 theft incidents and the exact prosecutorial decisions that led to the plea in 2004; some sources simply summarize criminal history without incident‑level context. Readers should note that the cited summaries compile Harris County records and reporting rather than newly released prosecutorial files, so incident‑level nuance beyond dates, charges, pleas, and sentences is limited in the accessible documentation presented here [1] [4] [2].

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