In a case that has sparked outrage among voting rights activists for years, an appeals court in Texas reversed Thursday and acquitted a woman who had been sentenced to five years in prison for illegally casting a provisional vote in the 2016 election.
The decision came two years after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, ruled that the lower appeals court, the Second Court of Criminal Appeals, was wrong about the illegal election law under which Crystal Mason was convicted in 2018 had laid out.
Ms. Mason, 49, of Fort Worth, was charged with illegally voting in the 2016 general election by casting a provisional ballot as a felon on probation. That ballot was never officially counted, and Ms. Mason insisted she did not know she was ineligible to vote and had acted on the advice of a poll worker who said she could cast the vote.
Ms Mason, who remains free on bail, appealed her conviction. In 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the question of whether she knew she was ineligible to vote was “irrelevant to the prosecution.”
But in 2022, the appeals court disagreed and asked the lower court to reevaluate the case. It said prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Mason, who was on three years of probation after serving a five-year sentence for federal conspiracy, knew her circumstances had disqualified her from voting.
In its decision to overturn her conviction and acquit her, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove she knew about it.
A copy of the ruling was provided by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Texas Civil Rights Project.
“I have been caught up in this fight for voting rights and will continue to work to ensure that no one else has to deal with what I have endured for over six years, a political ploy to attack the voting rights of minorities,” said Ms. Mason said in an interview statement Thursday. “I cried and prayed every night for over six years that I would remain a free black woman.”
Thomas Buser-Clancy, an ACLU attorney who represented Ms. Mason, called her victory a victory for democracy.
“We are relieved for Ms. Mason, who waited too long with the uncertainty of whether she would be jailed for five years and separated from her family simply for attempting to fulfill her civic duty,” he said.
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case against Ms. Mason, could not immediately be reached for comment late Thursday evening.
Prosecutors argued that there was reason to believe that Ms. Mason read the provisional ballot outlining the voting requirements and therefore knew she was committing a crime.
Ms. Mason’s conviction was a flashpoint for voting rights activists, who said her case highlighted the racial disparities in the prosecution of criminal voter fraud cases and the complexities of election laws for people convicted of felonies.
Source link
2024-03-29 03:43:56
www.nytimes.com