Army Sgt. Daniel Perry, convicted in April for the 2020 murder of a Black Lives Matter protester, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday. Prosecutors used his social media history to portray him as a racist and justify the conviction in order to prevent him from committing violent acts again.
Daniel Perry, 35, was facing between five and 99 years in prison for fatally shooting Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran, during a shootout at an airline in the BLM radicals rally in Austin, Texas, two months after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The sentencing against Perry comes after Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott called for a pardon for the defendant. In April, the jury found Daniel Perry not guilty of one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. It was then that Abbott announced that he would seek a pardon under the state's self-defense laws.
I am working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry. pic.twitter.com/HydwdzneMU
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 8, 2023
Abbott asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to expedite its review of Perry's conviction, recalling that Texas law did not allow it to approve a pardon without a recommendation from the board. However, there remained the deadly conduct charge that the progressive Travis County prosecutor's office used to re-launch its accusations against the sergeant and which now complicates Abbott's desire to pardon Perry. Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, a progressive, called Abbott's intervention in the case "deeply troubling" at the time and said he would seek a conviction for Perry.
On Wednesday, Perry's lawyers called the case "political prosecution" and the publication of the texts and messages on social media "character assassination." Attorney Clinton Broden said the defense team would seek both a pardon and an appeal of the sentence.
Those who claim that Governor Abbott’s expressed intent is based on politics simply choose to ignore the fact that it was only the political machinations of a rogue district attorney which led to Sgt. Perry’s prosecution.
The death of Garret Foster
On the night of July 25, 2020, Perry, an active duty sergeant at Fort Hood AFB, was working as a rideshare driver to earn extra money. He had to give a passenger a ride near the demonstration where BLM radicals were crowding. That's when several people began banging on Perry's car and a man carrying an assault rifle approached the vehicle and waved the rifle at Perry to roll down the window, Perry's attorney, Clinton Broden, claims.
That individual was Garret Foster, who, according to the attorney's statement, began pointing the AK-47 toward Sgt. Perry. It was then that Sgt. Perry, who had a pistol in the car for his own protection, fired at Foster because he believed his life was in danger.
However, the prosecution maintains that it was Perry who went towards the protesters with the intent to shoot. This conclusion is based on some of the sergeant's posts on social media that they deem as racist. Both Perry and Foster are white.
Separately, then-Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said officers responded to a 911 call in which the caller claimed that he had just shot someone who approached his car window and pointed a rifle at him.
As for Garret Foster's violent history, below are some of his social media posts from the days leading up to the incident.
