Daniel Perry, the man whose prospective life sentence the Texas governor indicated he would nullify last weekend, wrote of wanting to kill protesters in the years before he was convicted of killing a man at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, a newly released set of court documents show. The 76-page filing, unsealed by a Travis County judge on Thursday, is stuffed with private messages and social media posts in which Perry shared racist “white power” memes and talked of a desire to hunt and kill people. “Black Lives Matter is racist to white people… It is official I am racist because I do not agree with people acting like monkeys,” Perry wrote in one message, according to the Austin American-Statesman. It was a favored analogy of his; he also referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as a “zoo full of monkeys” and the protests as “monkey shit.” In a May 2020 Facebook message, Perry told a friend he “might have to kill a few people” participating in a demonstration outside his apartment. On Friday, he was convicted of murdering Garrett Foster at the 2020 demonstration. A day after his conviction, Gov. Greg Abbott said he would approve Perry’s pardon if the parole board brought it to his desk.
