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THE GOVERNOR OF TEXAS NODS TO WHITE SUPREMACIST VIOLENCE  
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Hassan Ali Kanu
May 21, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ Greg Abbott’s pardon is an attack on multiracial democracy. _

Daniel Perry enters a courtroom, May 10, 2023, in Austin, Texas. The
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on May 16 recommended a full pardon
for Perry, a former U.S. Army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally
shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020., JAY JANNER/AUSTIN
AMERICAN-STATESMAN VIA AP

 

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered a ringing endorsement of
racist, right-wing vigilante violence last Thursday, when he extended
a rare state pardon to a bigoted killer who was duly convicted for the
murder of Garrett Foster, a protester at a 2020 Black Lives Matter
demonstration.

Daniel Perry, who strongly opposed the nationwide protest movement
against racism and police violence, and posted violent fantasies about
murdering leftists and minorities on social media, ran a red light and
drove into a crowd of protesters in Austin in July 2020. He shot and
killed Foster, a white Army veteran who was legally carrying an
assault rifle, after Foster approached his car.

Abbott pardoned Perry on May 16 immediately after receiving a
recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is
under near-complete control of the governor himself. “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,”
he said in a statement.

The decision represents official government sanctioning of deadly
violence against people advocating against white supremacy, a
phenomenon with a long history that stretches back to the Ku Klux
Klan’s extrajudicial and unprosecuted lynchings, and which
has always also targeted
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allies of racial equality movements—like the Mississippi Burning
murders of three civil rights activists, two of them white, in 1964.

Abbott overturned a jury verdict that determined Perry had not fired
his gun legally, even under Texas’s shoot-first self-defense regime,
and without any new findings of fact nor new analysis that calls that
verdict into question. Indeed, the evidence against Foster was
clear-cut, and showed that he was a disturbed person who openly
planned the killing beforehand, motivated by his racism and violent
rhetoric against peaceful protesters by Republicans and former
president Donald Trump.

It’s also clear that Abbott _directed
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to recommend a pardon after he was pressured to do so by right-wing
politicians
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Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson
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the most influential mouthpieces
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white supremacy and misogyny in recent American history. Carlson has a
track record of lionizing other killers
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people acting in racial solidarity, like Kyle Rittenhouse.

“I look forward to approving the Board’s pardon recommendation as
soon as it hits my desk,” Abbott said in April
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year—less than 24 hours after the jury decided Perry was guilty. The
governor fulfilled that promise last week.

The statements from Foster’s loved ones on Friday said it all.

Foster’s distraught mother, Sheila Foster, told CNN
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she can’t wrap her mind around what’s happened, adding that
“nothing involving this case is normal.”

“Everything the governor put in his pardon letter was proven wrong
during trial,” Foster said. “If this was a Trump rally and
somebody drove into that crowd and gunned one of those people down, do
you think Gov. Abbott would pardon that killer?”

Gov. Abbott took the unprecedented step of requesting review himself,
before Perry had a chance to appeal the verdict, and even preempting
the judge’s sentence.

Whitney Mitchell, who was Foster’s fiancée, said in a statement
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Abbott’s pardon “desecrated the life of a murdered Texan, impugned
that jury’s just verdict, and declared that citizens can be killed
with impunity as long as they hold political views that are different
from those in power.”

Considering the circumstances, that’s perhaps the only way to make
sense of Abbott’s pardon—with the added clarification that the
political views most under fire are anti-racism and racial solidarity.

Gary Cohen, a parole and clemency attorney who has practiced in Texas
for about four decades, told the _Prospect_ in an interview he has
“never seen a situation like this” before. Cohen added that there
are “clearly some racist overtones in this matter,” pointing out
that Abbott sat on a Board recommendation
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issue a posthumous pardon to George Floyd for a minor drug conviction
for months, until the Board made another unprecedented move and
rescinded the recommendation without explanation.

The Board undertook the review of Perry’s case and issued the
recommendation despite the fact that its rules
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consideration of a full pardon “except when exceptional
circumstances exist,” like _new_ exculpatory evidence; and
notwithstanding that the “burden of showing such exceptional
circumstances rests upon the applicant.”

Moreover, Texas governors have traditionally issued pardons only for
decades-old, nonviolent convictions, typically after an individual has
served their time and demonstrated their rehabilitation and value to
the community, according to Cohen and reporting by The Texas Tribune.

But in Perry’s case, Abbott took the unprecedented step of
requesting review himself, before Perry had a chance to appeal the
verdict, and even preempting the judge’s sentence.

Moreover, the evidence against Perry included a clearly stated motive
to kill beforehand, and an after-the-fact admission that he hadn’t
acted in self-defense—all in Perry’s own words.

Court records showed
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Perry self-identified as a “racist,” shared “white power”
memes, and messaged friends about “hunting Muslims.” He
premeditated the murder and stated his motive quite clearly and
succinctly, saying he “might have to kill a few people” who were
protesting and “might go to Dallas to shoot” people he believed
were looting stores.

The evidence even showed that Perry perhaps had a more complex
understanding of Texas’s shoot-first self-defense law than Abbott
himself: When a friend asked if he could legally shoot protesters,
Perry replied
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he could “if they attack me or try to pull me out of my car,”
which is generally accurate—and did not happen in his encounter with
Foster.

Indeed, Perry didn’t even claim self-defense initially. Homicide
detectives asked him specifically to demonstrate how Foster was
holding his gun—clearly attempting to probe the self-defense
question of whether he feared an imminent attack. Perry basically
admitted that he decided to shoot _before _Foster became a threat:
“I believe he was going to aim at me,” Perry told
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“I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.”

That same, clear-cut record of evidence remains entirely unchanged as
of today.

That point is clear in the Board
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which simply contradict the jury verdict. The Board’s
three-paragraph statement simply recommends a full pardon and
restoration of firearm rights, with no explanation whatsoever.

Members stressed that they undertook a “meticulous review” of
police reports, records from the district attorney’s office, and
witness statements—as if the jury didn’t have all of those records
and information, plus more.

Indeed, the jury considered everything the Board reviewed over the
course of an eight-day trial with about 40 witnesses, and deliberated
for about 17 hours before reaching a guilty verdict, according to
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Texas Tribune.

To make matters worse, the Board apparently did _not_ consider
certain other highly relevant matters.

District attorney José Garza asked the Board to meet with Foster’s
family and to consider the public-safety implications before making a
recommendation, for example, according to a CNN report
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April last year. Yet the Board decided to restore gun rights to a man
who acted on a desire to kill people for protesting, and whose own
defense witnesses said
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believes that “anything out there can be a potential threat.” And
Abbott and the Board acted without even informing the victim’s
family, according to Foster’s mother—and despite Republicans’
rhetoric about prioritizing so-called “victims’ rights.”

American conservatives and right-wingers have a long history of
excusing plainly criminal and racist vigilante violence.

The governor’s statements were similarly empty, stating simply that
Texas has strong self-defense laws—ignoring that Perry’s central
claim of self-defense was rejected by a jury of Texans.

The governor’s pardon
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that Perry ran a red light and drove toward a crowd of people. And it
included a number of overtly political statements as well as
misrepresentations, including that Perry has “consistently stated
that he acted in self-defense.”

Abbott even resurrected a failed defense and misleading smear, writing
that the local district attorney, José Garza, directed the lead
investigator “to withhold exculpatory evidence from the Grand
Jury.”

But that issue, too, has been considered and rejected
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the courts: Perry’s lawyers submitted a sworn affidavit from the
investigator in an effort to have the indictment dismissed, but state
court judge Clifford Brown rejected that argument. “I’m just not
prepared to jump with you across the chasm that they committed some
kind of criminal conduct,” Brown said—way back in August 2021.

Abbott’s resurrection of the point also raises a question, given
that the governor himself, police, and other local officials can most
certainly take action against a district attorney who directs a
detective to “withhold exculpatory evidence” or demonstrates
“unethical and biased misuse of his office,” as Abbott put it.

Of course, American conservatives and right-wingers also have a long
history of excusing plainly criminal and racist vigilante violence,
from the height of the Ku Klux Klan’s lynching campaigns, to the
violent backlash against the 1960s civil rights movement, to the
actions of right-wing extremists today.

Since the 2020 protest movement, Republicans have enacted
laws seeking to absolve
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like Perry who try to hit protesters with their vehicles, for example.
At the very same time, conservatives have also responded with the most
draconian set of anti-protest measures in recent memory, including a
ruling
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leaves individual organizers and civil rights organizations exposed to
what one Supreme Court justice has called the “threat of destruction
by lawsuit” for simply engaging in protests.

Perry’s pardon also bears clear parallels to the final outcomes in
other recent incidents, like the case of Trayvon Martin’s killing
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Zimmerman, who also claimed self-defense (against a child) after
initiating a confrontation; the killing of Joseph Rosenbaum and
Anthony Huber by Kyle Rittenhouse, who has since become
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gun rights advocate (in Texas, incidentally); and the incident
involving Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who pleaded guilty to assault
and harassment before being pardoned
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Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, in 2021 (much like
Abbott, Parson announced that he would pardon the McCloskeys well
before their conviction).

Abbott’s pardoning of Perry is yet another thumbs-up from the GOP to
extremists that our national-security apparatus has identified as the
“most persistent and lethal threat
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to the country. It’s a move that expressly approves white
supremacist violence, and threatens the very fabric of multiracial
democracy.

_ Hassan Ali Kanu, a Prospect staff writer, is an award-winning
reporter covering everything from courts and access to justice, to
politics, labor, and more. He is a Sierra Leonean, now living in
Washington, D.C. Follow @hassankanu_

_Used with the permission © The American Prospect, Prospect.org
[[link removed]], 2024. All rights reserved. _

_Read the original article at Prospect.org:
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