BREAKING: Gov. Greg Abbott floats pardons for Austin police officers charged for excessive force in May 2020 protests https://t.co/dFzzdoWy5G @TexasTribune #txlege
— Joshua Fechter 📝 (@JoshuaFechter) February 23, 2022
The indictments accuse the 19 officers of using deadly weapons to injure nearly a dozen demonstrators and threatening them with serious bodily harm during the May 2020 protests against police brutality following the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Michael Ramos in Austin.Each officer faces two counts of aggravated assault, a first-degree felony when committed by a law enforcement officer. The charges are punishable by five to 99 years in prison, or a fine of up to $10,000.Abbott would need a majority of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, a board appointed by the governor, to approve any pardon issued by his office.
Nobody outside of Austin is paying attention to this. Austin is not likely to support Abbott in the primaries or the general. Primary voting ends March 2nd. The Board won't act that rapidly.
Which means Abbott won't go through with it as a pre-emptive measure. Afterwards? Not bloody likely. The Board seldom even pardons death row inmates. The best a Governor can ever get is a stay of execution. He can never get the Board to do what he wants (commute the sentence, etc.); or extremely, extremely rarely.
Abbott will have moved on by then.
I'm less of a fan of unconditional and unquestionable pardons though I'm even less of a fan of Republicans holding offices that get to issue or deny them. The range of pardons corrupt presidents have given should lead to a list of those who they can't pardon, including anyone involved in their administrations or campaigns or donors or those related to them. Or their own family members. I'm suspecting that some of the Founders may have suspected they might need one eventually, some of them were real sleeveens.
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