In a Land without Law

(I’m sending out this midweek piece early. No reason to wait. This case has a lot of people angry, and the governor doesn’t give a damn about the rule of law. He only cares about people who think the way he does. Please share and subscribe, if you haven’t. More news later on this Substack station. - JM)

The Texas governor supports murder. There’s no other descriptive that explains his latest intervention in matters of law and morality. In Greg Abbott’s Texas, it’s okay for the right person to kill someone as long as they are killing the right person. That’s the message our angry little man in the mansion is sending to every gunslinger in the Lone Star State. Just be sure you kill someone who is protesting against issues people on the right don’t like, and I’ll make sure you get a pardon.

Even before an appeal is filed on the conviction, Abbott has publicly said he wants to pardon Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, for killing U.S. Air Force veteran Foster Garrett, a Black Lives Matter protestor. Garrett had joined thousands of other Austinites who were downtown in the streets to send a message they were outraged by the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd. Perry, who was driving for Uber, had, according to evidence at his trial, posted on social media that he was going to “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.” Instead of a few, he killed only one, Foster, who was pushing his girlfriend, a quadruple amputee, in a wheelchair.

Abbott appears to have no concern for the victim. His greatest worry is that Tucker Carlson, the FOX “News” propagandist was criticizing him on national TV and saying that people didn’t have a right to protect themselves in Texas. Tucker spreads the lie that BLM protestors are Antifa and need to be stopped at all costs while editing video of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol to make those terrorists and killers look like tourists. But Greg Abbott is not a national political figure if he loses the FOX audience, so when Tucker thrusts, Greg moans. In a brief two-minute segment, Carlson argued that “in the state of Texas, if you have the wrong politics, you aren’t allowed to defend yourself.”

Turns out it is exactly the opposite. If you have the wrong politics, your killer can go free in Texas.

According to a jury that heard dozens of witnesses and looked at hours of forensic evidence, this was not a case of self defense. Perry had driven his car into a crowd of protestors by running a red light. Although Foster was carrying an AK-47, which is legal in this state, witnesses denied Perry’s claim that he raised it and pointed at Perry inside his car. Five shots from a .357 revolver through Perry’s windshield killed Foster, and then Perry fled the scene before later calling the cops. He claimed it was self-defense. The jury, over the course of eight days and seventeen hours of deliberations, disagreed and concluded the act was premeditated, and not spur-of-the-moment.

If it hadn’t happened in Greg Abbott’s Texas, that would be the end of the matter and Perry would be on his way to life in prison. Instead, the Texas fuhrer has decided that the killer is protected by the state’s arcane Stand Your Ground Law, tortured legal language, which means, essentially, if you are afraid of someone hurting you, it’s okay to go ahead and kill them. Abbott has concluded, unlike the jury, that Perry acted in self defense, and he doesn’t want him to go to prison because Tucker Carlson won’t be nice to the governor any more, if that happens. For the first time in Texas history, a governor is asking for a convict’s pardon even before he has filed an initial appeal of the verdict.

The technical aspects of the adjudication of Perry’s case are troubling. Abbott says he wants to act as fast as the Texas law allows to provide a pardon, but the governor does not have that unilateral authority. The state’s board of pardons and paroles must make a recommendation to the governor, and then he can either grant or deny. He has sent a letter to that board asking them for a review with the clear message that he wants a pardon, which he is likely to get since all seven members of pardons and paroles were appointed by the governor. Do you think they will vote against the man who gave them a $125,000 a year job? They were told to expedite the review, which, my guess is, will happen, and Abbott said he looked forward to signing it when it reaches his desk.

The amoral governor is also caving to pressure from no less a killer of innocents than Kyle Rittenhouse, who gunned down two protestors in 2020 in Wisconsin, also in the wake of the George Floyd killing.

"(Gov. Abbott) this is an unfair conviction. Please step in and free Daniel Perry," Rittenhouse tweeted. “He was justified in defending his own life when an AK-47 was pointed at him and he doesn’t deserve to be in jail.”

Carlson invited Abbott to come on his show and explain himself while wrongly describing what happened as “mob of rioters who surrounded Perry’s car and were pounding on it.” He told Abbott the conviction was a “legal atrocity” and that, “There is no right of self-defense in Texas.” Abbott, who usually jumps at a chance to politically fellate Carlson on network television, had his staff send a message he wasn’t available. The governor is suddenly afraid of even people who lick his boots 99 percent of the time.

The self-contradicting leader of Texas has already intervened in murder cases. In the instance of Thomas Bartlett Whitaker, convicted of killing his mother and brother, Abbott commuted him to a life sentence instead of death, while insisting he had "the utmost regard for the role that juries and judges play in our legal system.” The statement on his homepage also was directly opposed to the commutation he had just provided. "The role of the Governor is not to second guess the court process or re-evaluate the law and evidence."

Unless, of course, that governor disagrees with a jury and a prosecutor.

The “stand your ground” defense of Perry was specious and without merit. It can only be used if you are defending yourself from someone who has provoked a potentially deadly situation, and Foster did nothing of the sort. Perry was the person who drove a vehicle into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protestors while carrying a .357 on the seat next to him. Witnesses at the trial indicated Foster never raised the AK-47 and held it in a position described as at “low ready.” Perry, according to arguments accepted as fact by the jury, opened fire without cause and in an act of anger at an armed protestor. Frankly, it’s astonishing that Foster did not shoot at the car to stop it from running over people gathered in the street.

Daniel Perry

Contravening the rule of law is a hell of a look for someone with Abbott’s legal background as Supreme Court Justice, attorney general, and a trial court judge. What value is there in a court system if the findings of a jury can be ignored and superseded by political concerns? Go kill somebody and then make a nice cash donation to a politician with the power to toss out your conviction. Is that how it works in Texas now? Perry was looking for trouble, and when he couldn’t find it, he created it. During other protests he had also told friends on social media that he was thinking about going to Dallas to “shoot looters,” and even sent a text to a friend that he was at a protest in the city in June of 2020 and was “packing heat.”

Abbott’s issue isn’t just with the jury’s decision, though. He doesn’t care for Travis County District Attorney Jose’ Garza, who is having none of the governor’s intervention nonsense. Abbott and the state’s lieutenant governor are trying to give the legislature a legal fulcrum to work around prosecutors they don’t like and who lead cases that harm conservative, and even fascist thinking. Shortly after the governor jumped on Twitter to tell his followers he was going to get Perry a pardon, Garza issued a two-page statement that ought not to have been required if we weren’t living in a state ruled by injustices.

"A jury gets to decide whether a defendant is guilty or innocent,” Garza said, “not the governor. In a state that believes in upholding the importance of the rule of law, the governor's statement that he will intervene in the legal proceedings surrounding the death of Garrett Foster is deeply troubling."

Garza is one of several Democratic and elected prosecutors the state’s legislature and the governor and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are trying to constrain. The right wing of the GOP (no other wing currently exists) doesn’t like the idea that some DAs are saying they will refuse to prosecute people who assist women in getting abortions, first time drug offenders, petty theft, and spurious cases of election fraud. A bill to exercise state control over those locally-elected prosecutors has already passed the senate to take away prosecutorial discretion, and more than 30 other measures have been filed to affect the same end. Even though the initial bill was approved exactly a week ago, there was inherent hypocrisy in Patrick’s claim that “rogue district attorneys and judges, primarily in big cities, are not following our laws. These bills send a clear message that their delinquent behavior will not be tolerated.”

Unless, of course, you prosecute a gunslinger in Austin who killed a BLM protestor.

The indictment of Donald Trump has prompted more assertions that no one is above the law in America. That’s silly, of course. The wealthy and powerful in almost every nation on Earth have generally gotten better treatment form the law than commoners. Trump ought to file to have all the cases against him moved to Texas on a change of venue. Greg Abbott will give him a pardon.

And then a parade.