SAN ANTONIO – Embattled District 10 San Antonio City Councilman Clayton Perry pleaded no contest Friday to driving while intoxicated and failure to stop and provide information charges in exchange for one year of deferred adjudication.
If Perry successfully completes this special type of probation, the charges against him will be dismissed and he will avoid a conviction. However, the criminal cases will still show up on his record.
County Court 6 Judge Erica Dominguez granted the deferred adjudication over the opposition of the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors had made Perry a similar probation offer, but their deal would have required a conviction.
San Antonio police accused the North Side councilman of having 14 drinks at a bar on Nov. 6 before crashing his Jeep Wrangler head-on into a Honda Civic before fleeing the scene.
An SAPD officer found him lying in his back yard a little over an hour later, bleeding from the head and smelling of alcohol. In the officer’s body camera footage, Perry is seen speaking haltingly, having trouble standing, and trying unsuccessfully to unlock his own door with a credit card.
His resulting charges were both class B misdemeanors, each punishable by up to 180 days in jail, a $2,000 fine, or both.
“Look, I take full responsibility,” Perry said after his hearing. “I have done everything that I can to make this right. I’m following the process. I’ve taken a lot of advice and done a lot of things for this huge mistake. Huge mistake. I thank God that nobody was hurt. And I’m very thankful about that.”
Perry has less than two months left in his third term. He is not running for re-election.
“I’m going to step aside while I’m going through this process,” he said. “But, you know, who knows what the future will bring?”
Despite prosecutors’ arguments that Perry’s cases were “egregious,” Dominguez said she did not think he should be on a “strict probation.”
The judge, who also oversees the Veterans Treatment Court, told Perry his position as a councilman got him “unfair options from the state” and that other defendants have gotten better deals.
Perry, who is a retired US Air Force officer, had been trying to get into a pretrial diversion program through the VTC, but prosecutors only offered him the probation track in the specialty court. The diversion side would not only have allowed Perry’s charges to be dismissed, but for him to also get them expunged from his record.
Tamara Strauch, chief of the DA’s public integrity and cyber crimes unit, said the offer from prosecutors was “very well thought out.”
“We considered all of the evidence, including the videos. Mr. Perry is a city councilman. He’s held to a higher standard as a public official,” she told reporters.
Perry’s attorney, David Christian, argued Perry actually had about half of what police accused him of having drunk, though he acknowledged that was “still too much to drink and drive.” He also said Perry had been under anesthesia two days earlier for a medical procedure.
Christian also contended that Perry’s behavior on police body camera could be explained by having suffered a concussion in the crash.
Prosecutors, though, said Perry’s actions at a Bill Miller Bar-B-Q before the crash showed he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel.
Perry will also have to perform 24 hours of community service, abstain from alcohol for the entirety of his probation, and use an ignition interlock device on his car for at least six months.
Christian said Perry has already attended inpatient treatment and has also gone through an intensive outpatient program through the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.