DALLAS — Newly unsealed court documents reveal Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester, talked of killing people and shared racist memes over social media.
A Travis County judge unsealed the documents as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles considers an unusual request from Gov. Greg Abbott to pardon Perry, an Army sergeant.
Perry’s posts included messages like “Black Lives Matter is racist to white people...It is official I am racist because I do not agree with people acting like monkeys.” And in 2019, Perry wrote it was “to [sic] bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.”
Perry was found guilty by a jury April 7 for killing an armed protester at a Black Lives Matter march in Austin in 2020. Perry, who also worked as an Uber driver, came across demonstrators in his car and fatally shot 28-year-old Garrett Foster, who was attending the protest with his fiancée. Foster was carrying an AK-47, which is legal.
Perry, 33, has not been sentenced yet.
In a move that surprised legal experts, Abbott declared the day after Perry was convicted that he was seeking a pardon “as swiftly as Texas law allows.” Abbott argued that Perry should have been protected by Texas’ stand-your-ground laws because he was acting in self-defense. Conservatives, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, pressed Abbott to intervene in the case.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Social media messages
The court documents, reported Thursday by The Houston Chronicle, include posts of racist memes and Perry’s own messages in which he rants against Black Lives Matter and talks about shooting people.
In 2020, as protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota gripped the nation, Perry compared protesters to a “zoo full of monkeys” and said people were acting like “animals at the zoo.” He also talked of going to Dallas “to shoot looters.”
In May of that year, Perry told a friend on Facebook he “might have to kill a few people” who were rioting outside his apartment complex.
The friend wrote to Perry: “Can you catch me a negro daddy.” Perry responded: “That is what I am hoping.”
In another message, he wrote, “My parents own a 4 bedroom house and the BLM movement believes that my parents should give their house to a poor black family and pretty much live in a one bedroom house that they should buy with money they don’t have.”
Other messages included a meme with the n-word and advice to people “pick up your brass” if they encounter rioters.
In a statement to CNN, Perry’s attorney, Clint Broden, of Dallas, called the release of the documents a political decision.
On Thursday, Broden shared a letter addressed to the state parole board stating that the defense is prepared to explain to the parole board “the tortured nature of this case and the political machinations that resulted in the case even being brought to trial.”
If a pardon is not granted, Perry faces life in prison.
