AUSTIN, Texas — Judge Clifford Brown has rejected an appeal requesting a new trial from the defense team of Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted last month of murdering protester Garrett Foster during the racial justice protests in May of 2020. He will now be sentenced on May 9.
It has been almost a month since a jury reached a guilty verdict for Perry after two days of deliberating, and Gov. Greg Abbott called for Perry's pardoning.
Garrett Foster's mother, Sheila Foster, said these past few weeks, her family's been "stuck in a holding pattern."
"I have been sick ever since, physically sick, emotionally just run over, mentally exhausted, just wondering why all this is happening to my family," Sheila Foster said.
Now Perry's defense team is pushing for a new trial.
Perry's motion for a new trial has what one criminal defense lawyer calls "blockbuster claims." It alleges there was an alternate juror who improperly participated in deliberations by snorting, huffing and gasping. Another is an allegation of juror misconduct: one of the 12 jurors who convicted Perry allegedly brought outside case law into deliberations.
It's information he claims was taken from the Texas Penal Code concerning self-defense.
What Sheila Foster wants is peace. But she said she is unable to achieve it with the possibility of a new trial or pardon on the horizon.
"I don't want our family to go back through this. I don't want Whitney [Garrett Foster's fiancée] to have to go back through this, and it's just not fair to my son. He deserved better than this," she said.