May 23rd 2024
An american military veteran was killed in the street, presumed to pose a threat when he was exercising his right to carry a gun in public. You might expect America’s gun-rights advocates to demand justice for the dead man.
But here’s a bit of important context: when he was killed, that man, Garrett Foster, was marching in a Black Lives Matter (blm) protest in Austin, Texas, in July 2020. The person who shot him, Daniel Perry, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder. On May 16th Governor Greg Abbott pardoned Mr Perry, saying he acted in line with Texas’s “stand your ground” law, which allows people to use deadly force if they feel threatened.
More context is coming in a moment. To jump to the bottom line: whether or not you believe Mr Perry to be innocent, one lesson of this case, a bitter one, is that to be confident of getting justice under the law in Texas you must have political power. That is not just what Foster’s family has concluded. It is what the governor himself implied in voiding the conviction. He said Mr Perry was the victim of a district attorney who demonstrated “unethical and biased misuse of his office” in undertaking the prosecution.
In his proclamation justifying the pardon, Mr Abbott, a Republican, noted that Mr Perry was driving “on a public road” when he “encountered a group of protesters obstructing traffic” who pounded and kicked his car. He did not mention that witnesses testified under oath that Mr Perry accelerated into the protesters after running a red light. Mr Abbott said that Foster approached within 18 inches and “brandished a Kalashnikov-style rifle in the low-ready firing position”. He did not mention that Foster was acting legally, under Texas’s “permitless carry” law; or that Mr Perry initially said he “believed” Foster would aim at him, not that he did so; or that witnesses testified that Foster, who was 28 and accompanying his girlfriend, a quadruple amputee, kept his gun, a semi-automatic rifle, pointed down, not at Mr Perry, who drew a handgun and fired five times. According to the lead prosecutor, Foster’s gun was recovered with the safety catch on and no bullet in the chamber. Foster was white, as is Mr Perry.
The governor did not mention that in the weeks before the killing, as Mr Perry posted racist complaints on social media about blm (“like a bunch of monkeys flinging shit at a zoo”), he mused about killing rioters or looters. “I wonder if they will let my cut the ears off of people who’s decided to commit suicide by me,” he wrote, with the errata of the casual poster. He debated with a friend when such a shooting might be justified. “I will also repeatedly say I am in fear of my life,” he wrote, explaining how he would defend himself in such a case, as he later did.
In his proclamation, the governor noted that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended the pardon. Mr Abbott did not mention that the board acted unusually fast—not waiting for the appeals process—or that he had appointed all its members. He did not mention that he pledged to pardon Mr Perry the day after he was convicted, after Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, accused the governor of disregarding the right of self-defence.
Mr Abbott accused the district attorney, José Garza of Travis County, of directing an investigator to “withhold exculpatory evidence” from the grand jury that indicted Mr Perry. The governor did not mention that the judge in the case concluded that this accusation did not merit pursuing. But, then, like district attorneys, judges in Texas are elected, and Travis County includes the liberal city of Austin. The judge is a Democrat. Mark Jones, a professor at Rice University, says Mr Perry’s conviction was “in the most liberal county, overseen by a liberal Democratic judge, and overseen by the most progressive prosecutor in the state. Put all those things together, and that’s like waving a red flag in front of Republicans.”
Mr Abbott issued his pardon at a politically opportune moment, just before early voting began in Republican-primary run-offs in which he is pushing candidates who will support his legislative priorities. For their part, Democrats, who have not won statewide since 1994, have little political reason to make a fuss about the pardon. “The crossover voter is not necessarily wild about blm protesters,” Mr Jones says.
All the more reason the rule of law, and perceptions of justice, should stand apart from politics. Mr Perry was convicted by a jury of his peers, the bedrock unit of the American legal system. The jury weighed all this context, including Mr Perry’s claims. That also went unmentioned in Mr Abbott’s proclamation. But maybe Texans believe a Travis County jury cannot be fair, just as Donald Trump has insisted a New York jury considering his criminal case cannot be fair to him. Politics, and assumptions about politics, are seeping into every American institution, and so is cynicism about what chance ideals of fairness have against the realities of power.
“Isn’t worth it, bro”
Reading through the lengthy court record of Mr Perry’s toxic, sad social-media posts, one wonders, pointlessly, what might have happened if he and Foster had had a conversation. Both were military men: Mr Perry, then 33, was serving as an army sergeant at Fort Hood and driving for Uber that night in Austin to make ends meet. Foster was a libertarian, and Mr Perry also claimed to prize freedom. Mr Perry insisted he supported peaceful protest. He seemed, as a Jew, to feel particularly vulnerable to violence.
But probably a talk with Foster would have gone nowhere. Mr Perry’s family and friends pleaded with him on Facebook that summer to show more empathy, without much effect, or just to set politics aside. “Isn’t worth it, bro,” one friend counselled, urging him: “Go to a mountain to a river enjoy the rest of our life.”
At least in that moment, Mr Perry seemed to understand. “American politics are horrible,” he replied.
https://www.economist.com/united-states ... w-in-texas
