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This is a tale of two pardons in Texas.
The first was requested for George Floyd, the Black man whose murder by Minnesota police in 2020 sparked nationwide protests. His family sought a posthumous pardon in Texas related to a minor drug conviction from 2004. The officer who arrested him was later accused of fabricating evidence and was himself charged with murder.
When the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles reviewed the request and in 2021 recommended pardoning Floyd, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott did nothing. He waited. For months following the board’s recommendation, Abbott refused to talk publicly about a pardon for Floyd. And finally, mysteriously, the board reversed its recommendation in 2022 — sparing the governor from making what would surely have been a politically unpopular decision for or against the request.
Which brings us to the second pardon in our tale. The one Abbott was excited to talk about.
In June 2020, Daniel Perry, a 30-year-old Army sergeant and Uber driver in Austin, responded to a tweet by then-President Donald Trump about Black Lives Matter protesters. “Send them to Texas,” Perry wrote, “we will show them why we say don’t mess with Texas.”
A year later, Perry posted on social media: “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work, they are rioting outside my apartment complex.” He then drove into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Austin before shooting and killing one of them, 28-year-old Garrett Foster, a Texan and an Air Force veteran who was legally and openly carrying an AK-47. Foster was white, as is Perry.
After a trial that lasted more than a week, and after 17 hours of deliberations, a Texas jury found Perry guilty of murder.
And Abbott — who went radio silent when the parole board recommended pardoning Floyd — expressed public support for a Perry pardon the day after his conviction and directed the board to expedite its review.
“I look forward to approving the board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk,” Abbott said in a statement.
Abbott is signaling that he wants tolerance for Black Lives Matter protesters to stop. He apparently wants murderers to be freed if they hated the same people that Abbott hates. Perry fits the bill; he documented his hate for protesters in frequent texts and social posts.
This sort of tug-of-war between large blue cities and petty red governors happens a lot around the country. Abbott wasn’t motivated to clear Floyd’s name because it wasn’t a benefit to his political cause. A pardon for Perry was a different story. And sadly, we all know why.
On the night when he would later be shot and killed, Foster was interviewed by a reporter who asked why he was carrying a weapon during a peaceful protest. He said he was doing so to exercise his Second Amendment rights.
Perry told police afterward that he didn’t see Foster lift his weapon or aim it at anyone. Perry made clear before he even got to the protests that he was looking to kill. The claim of killing Foster in self-defense just doesn’t hold up, as 12 jurors recognized when they convicted Perry of murder.
Abbott would like to muddy the waters and pretend that what happened that night was self-defense. Despite the evidence.
Just as he allowed the conviction of Floyd to stand, despite the evidence that the pardon board reviewed.
At first glance, it all may seem like separate legal cases. But take a step back, and you’ll see the same worldview.
And that is the tale of two pardons — and one hateful man.
LZ Granderson is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
