If Pardoning People Who Kill Black Lives Matter Protesters Is Wrong, Greg Abbott Doesn't Want To Be Right

If only he could pardon some people who aren't actually guilty.

 James Reyos has been in prison since 1983, convicted of having killed the priest who raped him. It took until 2022 for investigators to actually test fingerprints found at the scene, belonging to the actual murderers. He's still in prison waiting to hear back from a judge.

 Garland "Butch" Martin was convicted of killing his entire family in a house fire that occurred while he was out of town. The techniques used to investigate the fire have since been discredited, and it is highly likely that the fire occurred spontaneously and not as a result of arson. He, too, is still in prison, waiting to hear back from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Nine years after the body of sex worker Bobbie Sue Hill was found in a creek in Parker County, Texas, a witness to the crime was put under hypnosis and gave a description of the killer to a sketch artist. The sketch, which looked entirely different from sketches drawn at the time, was then "aged" nine years and ended up looking like a guy named Larry Driskell. Driskell was brought in for questioning by Texas Rangers and kept in custody for several days until he eventually "confessed." His "confession" did not match details of the crime and he rescinded it almost immediately afterwards, but he was nevertheless taken into jail and kept there for two and a half years until he finally agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a 15-year sentence. The Innocence Project of Texas has since successfully convinced the Parker County District Attorney’s office to at least test some of the crime scene evidence for DNA ... and I guess we'll see how that one will turn out.

Those are the stories of just three of the people who are in prison in Texas for crimes they almost definitely did not commit. Unlike these men, we know for a fact that Uber driver/US Army Sergeant Daniel S. Perry killed 28-year-old Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Austin, Texas in 2020.

Perry doesn't deny it, though he and his lawyers maintain it was done in self defense, because Foster had been carrying an AR-15 while approaching Perry's vehicle — though witnesses say the gun was at no point pointed towards Perry. Prior to killing Foster, Perry wrote on social media that he just might “kill a few people on my way to work; they are rioting outside my apartment complex.”

On Friday, a jury found Perry guilty of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

On Saturday, (a person who may or may not be*) Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement on Twitter announcing that he would like the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend a pardon for Perry so that he can grant him one.

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.

Unlike the President or some other states, the Texas Constitution limits the Governor's pardon authority to only act on a recommendation by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, Texas law DOES allow the Governor to request the Board of Pardons and Paroles to determine if a person should be granted a pardon.

I have made that request and instructed the Board to expedite its review. I look forward to approving the Board's pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk.

Additionally, I have already prioritized reining in rogue District Attorneys, and the Texas Legislature is working on laws to achieve that goal.

By this, Abbott is likely referring to a bill recently introduced by Texas Republican legislators meant to force progressive attorneys to prosecute abortion cases whether they want to or not.

What Gov. Abbott is doing here is essentially saying that the Travis County District Attorney’s office and juries in the area are just too liberal to do their jobs or function the way they are supposed to, and if they don't prosecute the people he wants them to prosecute or give passes to the people he agrees with politically, he will override them and do what he wants anyway — probably because of how much he loves small government.

Clearly, he wants to send a message that he is okay with people going fully homicidal so long as they are only killing left-wing protesters.

If it were up to me, we would handle all crimes in a more effective way than just throwing people in horrific prisons for a certain amount of time and expecting them to come out unscathed, but we do not currently live in a country where that is a thing. Given this, it seems like it would at least make a whole lot more sense for Abbott to focus his energy on people who actually did not do the crimes they have been convicted of before pursuing a pardon for some nut who was obviously out on the town trying to kill some protesters.

But it's Greg Abbott, so that's probably not ever going to happen.

*As Twitter verification no longer means anything, we cannot say for sure that any particular tweet comes from any particular person.

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