Daniel Perry, right, was convicted of fatally shooting Garrett Foster, left, during a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas. (Foster vigil photo via KVUE; Foster’s inset photo courtesy Sheila Foster via KVUE; Perry’s mug shot from Austin Police Department)
Daniel Perry, found guilty by a unanimous Texas jury last year for murdering Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster at a racial justice protest in 2020, has been pardoned by that state’s governor Greg Abbott.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Perry was sentenced to 25 years in prison last May and when prosecutors called for Perry’s lengthy detention, they warned the judge that he had been a “loaded gun, ready to go off at any perceived threat” in the summer of 2020 — and the future looked no different.
“He’s going to do it again,” prosecutor Guillermo Gonzalez said a year ago.
Today, Daniel Perry walks free and will have his rights restored — including the right to own a gun.
Abbott’s issuance of the pardon was a decision he had long broadcast: Abbott only waited a day after the jury convicted Perry to ask the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to undertake a review of Perry’s case.
With the issuance of the pardon, in a statement on Thursday, Abbott, a Republican, said:
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. 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.
According to NBC News, as Perry was released from prison Thursday, his attorney Clint Broden told the outlet:
The Board of Pardons and Paroles undertook an independent and extensive review of the case. In particular, it interviewed the police detective who had previously determined, after a thorough investigation, that Mr. Perry had acted in self-defense when confronted with an angry crowd and a person with an assault rifle in the low ready position.
Foster’s common-law wife Whitney Mitchell didn’t see it that way and neither did a jury, she told the Texas Tribune. Perry, she said, told his friends about plans to murder protesters he didn’t agree with in the summer of 2020.
“After a lengthy trial, with an abundance of evidence, 12 impartial Texans determined that he carried out that plan, and murdered my Garrett,” she said.
Abbott “desecrated the life of a murdered Texan and U.S. Air Force veteran and impugned that jury’s 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,” she said.
Daniel Perry. (Image: Austin Police Department via AP, File)
Foster was killed on July 25, 2020, at a protest in Austin, nearly two months after George Floyd was murdered by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin.
Foster, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, legally carried a semiautomatic rifle at the event. When Perry approached the protesters, he was working as an Uber driver and saw them blocking the road. Perry drove into the crowd and fired his handgun from his car at Foster.
Perry insisted he had acted in self-defense because Foster, he claimed, pointed his firearm at him, But at trial, prosecutors showed evidence indicating Perry’s murderous conduct was premeditated. Witnesses at the trial testified that they never saw Foster raise his gun before Perry shot him.
Perry’s attorney has long called his client’s prosecution “political” and said Thursday that he believed evidence was suppressed at trial.
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