This Fucking Guy: Greg Abbott

He really fucking did it, he pardoned a racist motherfucker who shot and killed a Black Lives Matter protester

I have a Human Garbage of the Week in draft, and then this fucking guy drops in my lap. A NY Times alert hit my phone when I was doing some work that Texas Governor Greg Abbott had pardoned Daniel S. Perry, essentially forgiving him for killing a protestor in the protests around the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Daniel Perry was convicted, and in the aftermath of the trial, Abbott telegraphed that he would pardon him if the parole board would recommend it. I guess they did, over the objections of the DA’s office.

This will get your blood boiling: Texas Governor Pardons Man in Fatal Shooting of Protester in 2020

Mr. Perry was sentenced to 25 years in prison in an emotional hearing last year in which prosecutors presented evidence of racist online comments he had made and said that psychological experts had found him to be “basically a loaded gun.” As the pardons board considered the case, lawyers with the Travis County district attorney, José Garza, met with the board to argue against a pardon.

Sure, the victim, Garrett Foster was carrying a firearm, but it is Texas, and yeah, a majority of Texans are armed. During the trial, it was clear that this active service member (yeah, he was moonlighting doing some Uber driving) and it is clear that he drove into the area looking for a confrontation.

A lawyer for the family of the protester, Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old former mechanic in the U.S. Air Force, was critical of the governor’s decision.

“The governor of the great state of Texas has turned the rule of law on its head,” said the lawyer, Quentin Brogdon, who represented Mr. Foster’s mother, Sheila, in a civil action related to her son’s killing that she stopped pursuing after Mr. Perry’s conviction. “It’s a fair question to ask whether the governor is doing this based on the merits of the case or based on the politics.”

And:

During the trial, prosecutors showed evidence before the shooting of Mr. Perry’s animosity toward protesters on social media.

The jury reviewed video of the July 25 confrontation during their deliberations, according to an alternate juror, and considered the self-defense argument. But jurors ultimately voted to convict.

Lawyers for Mr. Perry had asked for a new trial, saying that information had been improperly introduced into the deliberations by at least one juror. But the judge in the case, Cliff Brown of the 147th Criminal District Court in Travis County, ruled that those actions did not undermine the verdict.

I am just gobsmacked. This is just Texas, and this fucking guy, Greg Abbott. What a fucking oxygen thief.

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