Texas Governor Weighing George Floyd Pardon
Texas Governor Greg Abbott typically pardons a handful of ordinary citizens, usually for minor offenses committed years or decades ago, during the holiday season. However this year, one name stands out amongst all of the others: George Floyd.
According to the Associated Press, Abbott has not said whether he will posthumously pardon Floyd this year for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose police work is no longer trusted by prosecutors. The state’s parole board, stacked with his own appointees, already unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd.
Floyd spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where he was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.
“It doesn’t matter who you think George Floyd was, or what you think he stood for or didn’t stand for,” Allison Mathis, a Houston public defender who submitted Floyd’s pardon application, said, according to the AP. “What matters is he didn’t do this. It’s important for the governor to correct the record to show he didn’t do this.”
In February 2004, Floyd was arrested for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. He later pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison.
Floyd’s case was among the many that prosecutors revisited during the fallout over a deadly drug raid in 2019 that resulted in murder charges against Gerald Goines, an officer no longer with the Houston police force. Prosecutors say Goines lies to obtain a search warrant in the 2019 raid that left a husband and wife dead. The office of Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has since dismissed more than 160 drug convictions tied to Goines.
