Source: CBS Texas / Youtube
Crystal Mason, who was sentenced to five years in prison Texas for attempting to vote by ballot in 2016 that was rejected, acquitted.
On Thursday (March 28), a Texas appeals court threw out the five-year prison sentence given to Crystal Mason, who was convicted of trying to vote in the 2016 presidential election using a rejected provisional ballot in Fort Worth. Mason claimed she had no idea she was ineligible because of her tax felony supervised release at the time. The case gained national attention and was seen as an attempt to intimidate black voters, who saw the sentence as outrageous for what legal observers saw as a simple mistake.
“We conclude that the volume of evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support a conclusion that Mason realized that she voted knowing she was ineligible to do so and is therefore insufficient to support her conviction for illegal vote,” Judge Wade said. Birdwell wrote in the decision. Mason, 49, was originally convicted in 2018 after a trial that lasted just a few hours. The state's highest court heard the case in 2022 and told the lower appellate court to reconsider the case. Mason had stayed out of jail on appeal, but lost her job at a bank and spent months in federal prison because she was arrested for a federal crime while on probation.
“I threw myself into this fight for voting rights and I will continue to swing to make sure that no other citizen faces what I faced and have endured for the past seven years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack,” he said. Mason. interview on Thursday night. “Even though I cried for seven years straight, seven nights a week… I have also prayed for seven years straight, seven nights a week. I prayed to remain a free black woman,” she said in a statement released later. “I'm very happy to see my faith rewarded today.”
“Crystal and her family have suffered for over six years as the target of a vanity scheme by Texas political leaders.” he said Allison Grinder Allen, a criminal defense attorney who represented Mason. “We're glad the court saw this for the perversion of justice that it is, but the damage this civil prosecution has done to shake Americans' confidence in their own franchise is immeasurable.”
