In the fall, clarity. At Christmastime, bureaucracy and cowardice.
Two months ago, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously recommended that Gov. Greg Abbott issue a posthumous pardon of George Floyd, the Black man who grew up in Houston’s Third Ward and was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis last year.
It was a rare and welcome move, not least because Floyd’s conviction on a minor drug possession charge had been based on the sworn testimony of disgraced former Houston Police Officer Gerald Goines, who has since been indicted on two counts of felony murder and fired from the department.
But as the holidays approached, and with it the traditional time for governors to grant clemency, Abbott had refused to say whether he’d issue the pardon, which had drawn supporters across Texas, including this board and Harris Country District Attorney Kim Ogg.
That all changed the day before Christmas Eve, when Abbott’s office finally broke its silence. Abbott would not be issuing the pardon, the office explained, because he no longer could: The week before, the pardon and parole board had sent a letter to his office explaining that it had rescinded its recommendation.
Since Texas law only lets a governor act on a recommendation from the board, Abbott would not — too bad, so sad — be able to consider a pardon for Floyd.
This curious chain of events raised questions for both the governor and the pardon board, but neither has seen fit to explain their decision in any detail. We sought comment from the governor’s office. We called the board’s chief of staff. And we spoke to the personal assistant to the board’s chairman, former Lubbock County Sheriff David Gutierrez.
None answered our questions.
Instead, the board released a letter Gutierrez sent to Abbott’s general counsel on Dec. 16. It explained that he had grown concerned about the sheer number of pardons the board had recommended this year, and initiated a review of every case. What he found, he wrote, was that the board had “strayed” from its normal rules in 25 such cases, Floyd’s included.
So, he told the governor, the recommendations were rescinded.
Did Abbott help convince Gutierrez to reevaluate the petitions? Did Gutierrez consult with the rest of the board, and did they vote on the matter again? (After all, vote in favor of the pardon had been unanimous just two months ago.) And finally, how exactly, did the board’s recommendation in the Floyd case stray from its norm?
Allison Mathis, the public defender who first petitioned the pardons board for clemency for Floyd, told us last Tuesday that she still hasn’t been told what was wrong with her application, or whether they’ll reconsider a new request. In fact, she first learned of the about-face from a reporter.
If Abbott did arrange for appointees on the board to take the tough decision off his plate, then he should be ashamed. Texans deserve a leader who looks them in the eye and tells them straight out what they think and why.
It’s also a setback for the larger effort at police reform.
Sure, many who have felt calls for reform go too far have winced at the way Floyd’s death has become a rallying cry for systemic changes to policing in this country. But no amount of misgivings over the calls to “defund the police” should allow any of us to rest easy with the fact that Floyd died in a way that no person in America, or anywhere, should ever die — unarmed, handcuffed, and with his neck pinned to the ground by the knee of a racist officer who ignored repeated pleas by Floyd that he could not breathe. Minute after minute, until Floyd stopped pleading, and stopped breathing.
It isn’t only those with spotless records who deserve justice. George Floyd should be alive today. Abbott can’t change that. But he still has the opportunity to show that being tough on crime doesn’t require being blind to justice.
He should encourage the board to send him a new recommendation for clemency in the case of the late George Floyd. Then he should grant it.
Houston Chronicle
