The Texas prosecutor who is seeking to overturn Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of a man convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester deserves credit for “thinking outside the box,” but it’s unlikely he will succeed, legal experts said Wednesday.

The request by Travis County District Attorney José Garza to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a writ of mandamus that would overturn Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry appears to be unprecedented, they said.

And the legal gambit by Garza, who is a Democrat, is going before a court that consists of nine elected judges who, like Abbott, are all Republicans.

“The choices for them are, ‘I can do the right thing,’ or ‘I can save my job and side with Gov. Abbott,’” said Charlie Baird, an Austin defense attorney and a retired state district court and Texas Court of Appeals associate judge.

That said, Baird added, he believes Garza’s bid “stands on solid legal ground.”

“The pardon and parole process is designed to occur at the end of the criminal justice proceedings,” Baird said. “What the governor did was leapfrog the process and cut out the criminal justice appeals process for political purposes.”

Alan Bennett, a former Travis County assistant district attorney now in private practice, said he was less certain.

Bennett said he applauds Garza “for his efforts to think outside the box in hopes of achieving what he truly believes is a just result.”

”I’m sure his team has researched this and I’m sure his heart is in the right place,” Bennett said. “I’m just not sure if he is standing on firm legal ground.”

“In Texas, the governor’s authority to grant pardons is well established and I don’t know it’s subject to judicial review,” he said.

Asked if he’s ever heard of another Texas prosecutor challenging a governor’s pardon, Bennett said, “This is the first I’ve heard of.”

Sanford Levinson, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said he, too, had never heard of a prosecutor trying to overturn a governor’s pardon.

“My hunch is no,” he said.

The experts weighed in a day after Garza announced he would petition the state’s highest court to overturn Abbott’s pardon. He said the governor had violated the constitutional separation of powers doctrine by intervening in a court’s actions.

“It’s up to the legal system whether a person is guilty or innocent,” Garza said at a news conference where he was joined by relatives of the slain protester, Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old former mechanic in the U.S. Air Force.

Foster’s mother, Sheila, said at the news conference that “we had justice for Garrett” for a short time before the governor’s pardon.

“My own child was killed on American soil for doing nothing but practicing his First and Second Amendment rights,” she said. “And our governor just said that’s OK, that’s acceptable, as long as he doesn’t like the victim or what the victim is saying.”

Perry was convicted last year of fatally shooting Foster on July 25, 2020, at a BLM protest in Austin and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The same day, Abbott vowed to pardon Perry as fast as legally possible. And last month, Abbott’s office announced the pardon, suggesting that Perry should have been exonerated under the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws.

Perry was released from prison shortly afterward.

Under Texas law, people can open fire when human life or property, including homes and vehicles, are threatened with serious violence, kidnapping or robbery. And a shooter who is justified in using deadly force has no obligation to retreat.

But the law also requires that a defendant provide evidence they were in the right during such a confrontation.

On the day of the deadly shooting, Perry was a 30-year-old Army sergeant based at Ford Hood, around 70 miles north of Austin.

He was moonlighting as an Uber driver in downtown Austin when he encountered a BLM protest, one of the many that took place that summer in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers.

Under questioning by police, Perry said he was stopped at an intersection when Foster pointed a semiautomatic rifle at him. He said he opened fire from inside his vehicle in self-defense.

Foster, police later said, was legally carrying the rifle.

More than a year later, a Travis County grand jury indicted Perry for murder.

Prosecutors said there was no evidence that Foster pointed his weapon at Perry. And, citing texts and social media posts, prosecutors attempted to portray Perry as a racist who could have simply driven away.

On April 7, 2023, Perry was convicted of murder. But the jury acquitted him of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Abbott then sought and received a unanimous recommendation to pardon Perry from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com