More than a year after a Travis County jury convicted Daniel Perry of murdering a BLM protester in Austin, Greg Abbott pardoned Perry, 37, on Thursday. Via the Texas Tribune:
A Texas state district court judge sentenced Perry in May 2023 to 25 years in prison for shooting and killing U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster during a 2020 demonstration protesting police brutality against people of color.
One day after a jury convicted Perry, Abbott directed the parole board to review the former U.S. Army sergeant’s case.
“Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial,” Abbott said in a statement announcing the proclamation that absolved Perry. “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”
The case was championed by the usual chaos agents, like Tucker Carlson. But no, this was not a simple “stand your ground” case:
Whitney Mitchell, Foster’s common-law wife, said that she had expected to grow old with Foster before Perry murdered him. In a Thursday statement, she said Abbott’s pardon made Texans less safe.
“Daniel Perry texted his friends about plans to murder a protester he disagreed with. After a lengthy trial, with an abundance of evidence, 12 impartial Texans determined that he carried out that plan, and murdered my Garrett,” Mitchell said. “With this pardon, the Governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan and US Air Force veteran, and impugned that jury’s just verdict. He has declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his — and different from those in power — can be killed in this State with impunity.”
Before Daniel Perry murdered a veteran in 2020, he told a friend he “might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
A year before, he wrote, “to bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims.”
@GovAbbott’s alliance with white nationalists is putting dangerous people on our streets. https://t.co/4WhWYiTtOC— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) May 16, 2024
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott just pardoned Daniel Perry. Perry killed BLM protestor Garrett Foster, who was pushing his quadruple amputee fiancé through the streets during a BLM rally.
This is a man who was convicted by a conservative jury of murder. There was no new evidence… pic.twitter.com/1fXW0tdae7
— Brian Hopkins (@TheBrianHopkins) May 16, 2024
Gov. Greg Abbott just pardoned Daniel Perry, a Texas man who drove his car into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protestors—before shooting and killing one point blank.
Perry texted a friend: “I will only shoot the [protestors] in front and push the pedal to the metal.” pic.twitter.com/3x2IWFjHxq
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) May 16, 2024
