Berenice Garcia, Texas Tribune
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.
Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells wants to reinstate Crystal Mason's illegal voting conviction, his office announced Thursday.
Mason, who lives in Tarrant County, was acquitted of illegal voting last month. Sorrells' office is now asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn the ruling that found her not guilty.
Mason was convicted of illegal voting in March 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison for casting provisional ballots in the 2016 election while on parole on federal tax evasion charges.
“We will protect the ballot box from fraudsters who think our laws do not apply to them,” Sorrells’ office said in a statement.
The office argues that the Second Circuit failed to properly respect the trial court's conviction and re-evaluated the evidence in Mason's favor when it overturned his conviction.
Sorrells' office added that the substantial conviction was based on testimony from an election worker that Mason understood he was ineligible to vote. (This eastern Texas town hasn't held a city council election in at least 18 years.)
Mason claimed he did not know he was ineligible to vote.
“It is disappointing that the State Government has decided to request further review of Mr Mason’s case. But we are confident that justice will ultimately prevail,” Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. “The Court of Appeals’ decision was sound and correct. “It is time to give Mr. Mason peace along with his family.”
Although it initially upheld her conviction, the Tarron County-based 2nd Circuit overturned it last month after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals directed the lower court to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason.
Initially, the court found that Mason's knowledge that he was ineligible to vote because he was on supervised release was enough to warrant an illegal voting conviction. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the case to be re-evaluated, ruling that the lower court “erred by failing to require evidence that: [Mason] “I actually knew it was a crime to vote while on supervised release.”
The years-long saga began in 2016, when Mason, on the advice of a poll worker, submitted a provisional ballot after learning his name was not on the voter rolls for that year's presidential election.
Her ballot was rejected because she was ineligible to participate in elections while on supervised release due to a federal tax fraud conviction. She was arrested a few months later.
The case against Mason is that the individual “has completed all punishment, including imprisonment, parole, supervision, and probation for a serious crime, or has been forgiven.”
A trial court judge found her guilty of illegal voting, at the time a second-degree state felony, after testimony from a poll worker who watched Mason read each line of the affidavit and move her fingers. But she said Mason did not read the entire affidavit. At her trial, the supervisor of the probation office overseeing her release testified that no one in that office informed her that she was still ineligible to vote.
The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in a 2022 decision that directed a lower appellate court to reevaluate the case that Texas election law requires a person to know they were ineligible to vote in order to be convicted of illegal voting.
The law was clarified by lawmakers in 2021, stating that a Texan cannot be convicted of illegal voting “solely because the person signed a provisional ballot” but instead requires other evidence to prove that the person intentionally attempted to vote. Required provisions were added to the Election Act. Illegal voting.
Tracking URL: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/25/crystal-mason-illegal-voting-texas-tarrant-county/
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