Texas Woman Acquitted After Serving 5 Years For Voting Error

A Texas appeals court threw out a five-year prison sentence for Crystal Mason, the Texas woman who was sentenced for trying to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election. Via the Guardian:

Mason, now 49, attempted to vote in Fort Worth in the 2016 even though she was ineligible because she was still on supervised release – which is like probation – for a tax felony. She has always maintained she had no idea she was ineligible and only tried to cast a ballot because her mother urged her to.

A judge convicted her in a 2018 trial that lasted just a few hours.

Mason’s case became well known nationally and struck a chord as an example of an egregious punishment for a voting mistake.

In 2022, Texas’s highest criminal court told a lower appellate court it had to reconsider a ruling upholding Mason’s conviction. On Thursday, that court said there was not sufficient evidence Mason knew she was ineligible to vote.

Mason has really suffered as a result of this prosecution:

After Mason was arrested in 2017, she lost her job at a bank. She was also sent back to federal prison for several months for being arrested while on probation for a federal crime. During that time, she almost lost her home to foreclosure.

"Law and order" minus common sense and compassion? Seems like the state of Texas was trying to intimidate black voters.

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