Crystal Mason’s contentious illegal voting conviction must be reconsidered, criminal appeals court says

Crystal Mason in Fort Worth in 2019. She was convicted of voting illegally in the 2016 election, but her case has remained on appeal., our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the lower court had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.” They sent the case back down with instructions for the lower court to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason.

A trial court judge convicted her of illegally voting, then-a second-degree state felony, after a poll worker testified he watched Mason read, and run her finger along, each line of an affidavit. Mason said she did not read the entire affidavit. At trial, a supervisor from the probation office overseeing her release testified that no one from that office had informed her she was still ineligible to vote.

The court on Wednesday ruled against Mason on two other issues. They rejected her arguments that the lower court had interpreted the state’s illegal voting statute in a way that criminalized the good faith submission of provisional ballots, and that the appeals court had wrongly found she “voted in an election” even though her provisional ballot was never counted.

But the legal landscape underpinning Tarrant County’s prosecution shifted while the case was under review, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals noted.

Intent means shit. Voter fraud is voter fraud. Line em up with chains. Criminals

She has zero chance of getting out of jail. Poster child.

provisional ballots are not even counted until they are investigate and an election official and a supervisor TOLD HER TO FILL IT OUT she should have never been charged and she should sue everyone involved in this into the dirt

She's guilty. There's nothing controversial about that.

About damn time

Absolutely incredible this is still ongoing.

By controversial you mean clearly excessive (no insurrectionist has gotten a similar sentence), politically motivated (suppress the vote), and horribly unjust given that people registered in 3 states like Mark Meadows apparently can traipse around with no fear of an indictment.

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