Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Daniel Perry, a white former Army sergeant who fatally shot an armed protester at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, Politico reports. Perry was sentenced to 25 years in prison last May for fatally shooting Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran, at a demonstration against police violence and social injustice in Austin, Texas. Soon after Perry was convicted, the governor had signaled his intentions by directing the pardon board to send him a legally required recommendation. This week, Abbott said in his pardon proclamation that District Attorney José Garza “demonstrated unethical and biased misuse of his office in prosecuting Daniel Scott Perry.” The governor also accepted the pardon board’s recommendation to restore Perry’s firearm rights. “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,” Abbott said in a statement. “I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.”
The governor, who was under pressure from right-wing media figures to intervene, said the shooting amounted to self-defense. Perry was driving for Uber in July 2020 when he turned onto a street filled with protesters marching as part of the wave of civil justice protests unleashed by the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis two months earlier. The former soldier said he acted in self-defense, claiming he fired his pistol when Foster, who was legally carrying an AK-47, pointed the rifle at him. Witnesses testified that they did not see Foster raise his weapon, and prosecutors argued that Perry could have driven away without shooting. During the trial, prosecutors showed jurors Perry’s social media history and text messages, which included racist comments. Among them: a comment on Facebook a month before the shooting in which he wrote “It is official I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo.”