In a rare move, the Republican governor of Texas said he was ready to pardon an Uber driver convicted on Friday of killing a protester during major protests against racism and police brutality in 2020. Daniel Perry, a 33-year-old military man who drove VTCs in his spare time, found himself in the middle of a crowd of demonstrators in Austin, in the southern United States, in July 2020.
At his trial, his lawyers pleaded self-defense. They said he fired five shots at Garrett Foster, 28, because Foster approached his vehicle pointing an assault rifle in his direction. Prosecutors countered that he could have turned around and started the confrontation.
“I could kill a few people on the way to work”
According to the local newspaper Austin American Statesman, they presented messages that Daniel Perry had posted on social networks before the tragedy, in which he wrote in particular: “I could kill a few people on the way to work, there is a riot downstairs from my apartment”. After two days of deliberation, a popular jury found him guilty of murder. He faces a life prison sentence. The sentence will be pronounced soon.
Without even waiting for him to appeal, Governor Greg Abbott said he had asked his state’s pardons office to review Daniel Perry’s case. “I am ready to endorse his recommendation as soon as it hits my desk,” he added in a statement released Saturday evening.
A trial reminiscent of another
He explained that he wanted to defend “the solid law of self-defense + Stand your ground +” in force in his state, which authorizes a person to use lethal force if they consider themselves in serious danger, even if there is another possibility of escaping this danger.
This trial is reminiscent of that of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on the sidelines of the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of African-American George Floyd by a white police officer.
The young man had also pleaded self-defense, but he had been acquitted. He has since become a muse of the hard right. Governor Abbott’s announcement sparked the same partisan divisions. If he was hailed by Republicans, local Democrat Sarah Eckhardt denounced a “frightening and dangerous attack on the rule of law”, reports the daily Texas Tribune.