If Gov. Abbott is in a hurry to pardon a Perry, here’s one who was actually innocent | Opinion

Gov. Greg Abbott recently injected himself into the judicial process when he prematurely said he expects a pardon application from the Board of Pardons a Paroles for recently convicted Travis County defendant, Daniel Perry.

Daniel Perry shot and killed Garrett Foster during a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin in 2021. There was a question about whether Foster pointed a weapon at Perry, making the killing self-defense. But a properly seated jury heard the evidence and determined that Perry was a murderer. When it made national news and became a political cause, Abbott promised a swift pardon.

If only he could move so quickly on another pardon request in a clearer case. It coincidentally involves a defendant named Perry and came from the same Austin court. In this case, though, there’s no question of innocence.

In February 2020, an application for a posthumous pardon was filed on behalf of Douglas Perry. He was a codefendant with Fran and Dan Keller in the infamous Oakhill Satanic Ritual child abuse trial. The three were charged and convicted of child molestation and abuse. The Kellers were sentenced and served years before their convictions were overturned.

Perry signed a confession that he soon recanted, saying it was coerced. He was sentenced to probation but had to register as a sex offender. When he failed to properly do that, he was thrown in prison, too.

In May 2015, after an exhaustive reinvestigation by the Travis County District Attorney’s office, the Kellers were exonerated by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In July 2015, Doug Perry suffered a heart attack. His mother, Bonnie Perry, tried numerous times to resuscitate him, but Doug Perry died at home.

Fran and Dan Keller would go on to claim compensation from the state of Texas under the Tim Cole Act. Tim Cole is my oldest brother. He was a student at Texas Tech University in 1985, when a series of rapes was committed on and around the campus. Tim was arrested and labeled as the Tech Rapist.

My brother was tried, convicted and sentenced, on Sept. 17, 1986, to 25 years in prison. Tim always maintained his innocence. Often in letters that he would write to me from prison, he would say, “I want vindication, exoneration and a full pardon.”

My brother Tim never got what he wanted and deserved in life. Tim would later die in prison after suffering a heart attack due to complications from asthma. In 2009, after DNA testing was done, Tim was proved innocent. In 2010, Gov. Rick Perry issued the first posthumous pardon ever in Texas.

The attorney general at the time was Greg Abbott. He was instrumental in my brother’s pardon because he issued an opinion making it possible for Texas to pardon the deceased. In 2014, Abbott joined me, Governor Perry and other state officials at the unveiling of a statue of Tim in Lubbock.

“We all came together to clear the good name of Tim Cole,” Perry said. Abbott added: “The Tim Cole statue will always be a reminder that we must always pursue justice, no matter how long it takes.”

How long, Governor? The application for a posthumous pardon for Doug Perry has been sitting at the Board of Pardons and Paroles for more than two years. I visited with Doug Perry’s parents, Bonnie and Jimmy Perry, in 2018 at their home in Austin. Mrs. Perry said something to me that reverberated through my very soul, the very same words that my mother said to Gov. Perry in 2009: “I just want to reclaim my son’s good name back.”

We must come together to clear the good name of Doug Perry. The Travis County District Attorney’s office and the court in which Perry was convicted have all said that he is actually innocent. This miscarriage of justice must end now.

When Abbott spoke in 2014 in Lubbock, he had his sights set on becoming governor. In 2023, perhaps he has his sights and — and his rhetoric — set on a run for president.

Equal justice under the law has been denied to Doug Perry. We pledge that all who seek justice in the United States shall have it, even in death. It has been said that the day will come when we all stand before the God of history and we will speak in terms of things we have done.

I can hear the God of history saying: “That was not enough, when you could have restored the good name of my innocent children, you refused.”

Cory Session of Fort Worth is vice president of the Innocence Project of Texas, which works to free those wrongfully convicted, and the brother of Timothy Cole.