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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a full pardon for U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted last year of murder in the shooting death of Garrett Foster, a USAF veteran and BLM protestor. Foster had attended a downtown Austin protest armed with an AK-pattern rifle, and joined his fellow protestors in illegally barricading the street. Perry's car was halted by the barricade, Foster approached the driver's side door, rifle in hand, and Perry shot him four times from a range of roughly 18 inches, fatally wounding him. Police reported that Foster's rifle was recovered with an empty chamber and the safety on.
Perry claimed that the shooting was self defense, that the protestors swarmed his vehicle, and that Foster advanced on him and pointed his rifle at him, presenting an immediate lethal threat. Foster's fellow protestors claimed that Foster did not point his rifle at Perry, and that the shooting was unprovoked. They pointed to posts made by Perry on social media, expressing hostility toward BLM protestors and discussing armed self-defense against them, and claimed that Perry intentionally crashed into the crowd of protestors to provoke an incident. For his part, Foster was interviewed just prior to the shooting, and likewise expressed hostility toward those opposed to the BLM cause and at least some desire to "use" his rifle.
This incident was one of a number of claimed self-defense shootings that occurred during the BLM riots, and we've previously discussed the clear tribal split in how that worked out for them, despite, in most cases, clear-cut video evidence for or against their claims. The case against Perry was actually better than most of the Reds, in that the video available was far less clear about what actually happened. As with the other Red cases, the state came down like a ton of bricks. An Austin jury found Perry guilty of murder, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
Unlike the other cases, this one happened in Texas, and before the trial had completed, support for Perry was strong and growing. That support resulted in Governor Abbott referring Perry's case to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. A year later, the board returned a unanimous recommendation for a pardon to be granted. Abbott has now granted that pardon, and Perry is a free man, with his full civil rights restored to him. He has spent a little more than a year in prison, and his military career has been destroyed, but he is no longer in jail and no longer a felon.
So, now what?
It seems to me that there's a lot of fruitful avenues of discussion here. Was the shooting legitimate self-defense? To what degree did the protestors' tactics of illegally barricading streets, widespread throughout the Floyd riots and a recurring prelude to tragedy, bear responsibility for the outcome? How should we interpret Perry's comments prior to the shooting, or Foster's for that matter?
Two points seem most salient to me.
First, this case is a good demonstration of how the Culture War only rewards escalation, and degrades all pretensions to impartiality. I do not believe that anyone, on either side, is actually looking at this case in isolation and attempting to apply the rules as written as straightforwardly as possible. For both Blues and Reds, narrative trumps any set of particular facts. No significant portion of Blues are ever going to accept Reds killing Blues as legitimate, no matter what the facts are. Whatever portion of Reds might be willing to agree that Reds killing Blues in self-defense might have been illegitimate appears to be trending downward.
Second, this does not seem to be an example of the process working as intended. If the goal of our justice system is to settle such issues, it seems to have failed here. Red Tribe did not accept Perry's conviction as legitimate, and Blue Tribe has not accepted his pardon as legitimate. From a rules-based perspective, the pardon and the conviction are equally valid, but the results in terms of perceived legitimacy are indistinguishable from "who, whom". As I've pointed out many times before, rules-based systems require trust that the rules are fair to operate. That trust is evidently gone.
This is what we refer to in the business as a "bad sign".
I agree with your assessment that playing tribal politics in the justice/pardon system is capital-B Bad.
In general, I am kind of opposed to a pardon process controlled by the executive, because I see them as more tribal than a jury. At least require bipartisan support for a pardon or something. 25 years seem excessive and politically motivated, pardon at the earliest opportunity also seems politically motivated. An early pardon after five years or something would be much different.
I always find it amusing that Germany has (on paper, at least) stronger self defense laws than the US, where there is generally a duty to retreat in public spaces. But even we have the concept of deliberately having produced a situation where you need to employ self-defense may negate your claim to self-defense.
For me, a lot would hinge on circumstantial facts. Was that barrier on a route which Perry took for some reason, or was he intentionally going to the barrier itching for any excuse to shoot someone? Did he try to report the barrier to the police before driving up to it?
If two people are both itching for a fight, and one kills the other, a manslaughter sentence for the survivor may in general provide good incentives. Similarly, if Gang A illegally occupies a building, and Gang B decides to take a stroll on the sidewalk of that building to provoke a confrontation and it comes to a shootout, I would generally advocate manslaughter charges for the survivors on both sides.
Edit: my other take is that if (a) the police was aware that there was an illegal road block by armed men and (b) they decided to wait that out, then whoever made that decision failed hard in their duty to keep the peace. Keeping the peace could have meant telling the BLMs to clear the roadblock, using a water gun vehicle to clear the blockade or even just setting up their own police roadblock a bit upstream (under the fiction that the BLM road block was an approved demonstration).
This is just handing over control of whatever an aggressor wants to them. It's already bad when the government allows Gang A to occupy the building. It's worse when the government punishes someone for not respecting Gang A's claim; now the building is de facto Gang As property (even if the title was not some third party but Gang B itself)
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