Texas panel now sez don’t pardon Floyd
A Texas board that unanimously recommended a posthumous pardon of George Floyd for a 2004 drug arrest abruptly backtracked Thursday, citing newly discovered “procedural errors” in its months-old referral to Republican Gov. Greg Abbot.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had recommended the pardon in October. The unexpected reversal was announced by Abbot’s office two days before Christmas — around the time when he usually issues pardons.
Floyd, 46, spent much of his life in Houston before his death under the knee of a Minneapolis police office last year.
“As a result of the Board’s withdrawal of the recommendation concerning George
Floyd, Governor Abbott did not have the opportunity to consider it,” an Abbott spokeswoman said in a statement.
A letter from the board to Abbot, released after the announcement, showed that the board had found “unexplained departures” from its process and needed to reconsider more than a third of its 67 clemency recommendations this year, including one for Floyd. Further details on the supposed errors were not available.
The announcement was met with outrage from Allison Mathis, a public defender in Houston who submitted Floyd’s pardon request. She called the move “a ridiculous farce” and said the governor was playing politics ahead of a competitive March primary election.
“It really strains credibility for them to say now that it’s out of compliance, after the board has already voted on it,” she said. The lawyer noted that the board is filled with Abbot appointees.
Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is serving 22 ½ years in prison for the second-degree murder of Floyd. Chauvin pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal civil rights charges.
The pardon request in Texas stems from Floyd’s arrest in 2004 for selling $10 of crack to an undercover cop. He spent 10 months in prison.
The Houston police officer who busted Floyd, Gerald Goines, was later accused in 2019 of lying to obtain a warrant after a deadly shootout that left two Texans dead and five cops wounded.
Goines is charged with two counts of murder in connection with the botched 2019 raid, and Houston’s district attorney has dismissed more than 150 cases in which he was involved, according to the Dallas Morning News.