This week, Daniel Perry was found guilty of killing Garrett Foster at a July 2020 Black Lives Matter event.
Travis County District Attorney José Garza said that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s plan to release Sgt. Daniel Perry for killing a Black Lives Matter protester during the Riots of 2020 was “deeply troubling” over the weekend. Perry was found to have killed an innocent Black Lives Matter protester, so he was found guilty of murder. Perry was found to have killed someone, so he got a life term.
A jury found Perry guilty of murder on Friday for the death of Air Force veteran Garrett Foster in July 2020. Foster was at a protest in downtown Austin with an AK-47 when he was killed. Perry’s lawyers say that he shot Foster in self-defense, but the state says it was Perry who pulled the trigger.
“In this case, a twelve-person jury put their lives on hold for more than two weeks while they listened to the State’s and Defense’s arguments and weighed the facts given by both sides. After thinking about it for more than fifteen hours and hearing from witnesses and experts, the jury decided that Daniel Perry killed Garrett Foster.In a statement made on Sunday, Garza said he had “no reasonable doubt” that Daniel Perry was guilty of murder.
In our courts, guilty or not guilty decisions are made by juries, not by the Governor.
Governor Abbott said he didn’t agree with the decision and said that he had asked the Board of Pardons and Paroles to look into Perry’s case and decide if he should be pardoned or not. At this point, Garza had something to say.
In a statement made on Saturday, Abbott supported Texas’ “Stand Your Ground” law, saying, “Texas has one of the strongest “Stand Your Ground” laws that can’t be overturned by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.” As soon as the Board’s request to release someone gets to me, you can be sure I’ll say yes.
Foster’s girlfriend, Whitney Mitchell, told the Austin American-Statesman, “I felt some sense of justice and relief when the jury made its decision.”
“But the governor took that right away when he said that Texas has two legal systems: one for powerful people like Mr. Perry and one for everyone else,” Mitchell told a local newspaper. I hope that the governor will never again say that he cares about the rights of victims.
On July 25, 2020, Perry was driving for Uber in downtown Austin when he saw a big Black Lives Matter rally. He told the police that Foster pulled out an AK-47 as protesters surrounded his car, which made him shoot in self-defense.
Perry drove away from the scene after calling the cops. He was finally let go. In July 2021, a full year after the killing, a jury charged Perry with murder and aggravated attack with a dangerous weapon.
David Fugitt, a former Austin police officer who was in charge of the case and worked on it for 30 years, talked to Perry about it. After the grand jury charged Perry with murder, Fuggit said in a written statement that Garza’s office forced him to hide information that would have cleared Perry.
Fugitt wrote in the affidavit, which a judge eventually threw out, that it was clear the DA’s office didn’t want to show evidence to the grand jury that would clear Daniel Perry and/or show that witness statements obtained by the family of Garrett Foster and/or their lawyers were inconsistent with previous interviews these “witnesses” gave the police and/or the video of the incident in question.
This week, Perry’s lawyers put Fugitt on the stand as a witness. Fugitt said that he didn’t arrest Perry the night of the murder because he thought Perry had a good case of self-defense.
According to Fox 7 Austin, he said there was no proof Perry ran into the crowd and that Foster’s bullet wounds show he was defending himself with a knife when he went up to Perry’s door.
The prosecution’s case against Perry was based on his phone texts and posts on social media right before the murder. Perry had messaged on May 31, 2020, two months before the shooting, saying, “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work because there is a riot outside my apartment complex.” Fox 7 Austin says he got more texts that said things like, “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters” and “I only shoot the ones in front of me and push the gas to the floor.”
Perry could get a life term if he is found guilty. Garza said on Sunday that the punishment hearing would give the court “more evidence to look at and weigh.”
Abbott, on the other hand, says that he has “made it a priority to stop bad district attorneys” and that the Texas Legislature is now writing rules to help him do this. After the ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was also very angry with Garza.
As Paxton said, it has become clear to us this week that bad attorneys have turned the court system into a weapon. We’ve got to stop them!
After being chosen for the first time in 2020, Garza is running again in 2021. People have said that his policies are too easy on crooks, and the millionaire who leans to the left, George Soros, has given him money.
Local news station KVUE did an investigation in 2021 and found that Garza’s office had dropped a lot of major criminal charges, such as violent robbery and attack on a pregnant woman.