Texas upholds sentence for woman who didn't know she was ineligible to vote
( This breaks my heart, its so insanely cruel )
Crystal Mason was previously sentenced to five years in prison for a mistaken vote that was not counted
A Texas appeals court on Thursday upheld a five-year prison sentence for a woman who was convicted of illegally voting even though she didn’t know she was ineligible when she went to the polls in 2016. The punishment for the Fort Worth woman, Crystal Mason, stirred national outrage because of its severity, prompting accusations that prosecutors were trying to intimidate Texans from voting.
Four years ago, Mason was on supervised release, similar to probation, for a federal felony conviction related to tax fraud. She didn’t know that Texas prohibits felons from voting until they finish their sentence entirely. Mason voted in the last presidential election at the urging of her mother and cast a provisional ballot when poll workers couldn’t find her name on the voter registration rolls. The ballot was never counted because Mason was not an eligible voter.
During her 2018 trial probation officials testified that they never told Mason she could not vote, but the appeals court said that didn’t matter. Mason was guilty, the court said, because she knew she was on supervised release. “Contrary to Mason’s assertion, the fact that she did not know she was legally ineligible to vote was irrelevant to her prosecution,” Justice Wade Birdwell wrote for a three-judge panel on Texas’ second court of appeals.
“These are difficult times for me, but I have faith that with the help of my family and God, right will prevail,” Mason said in a statement on Friday. “A punishment of five years in jail for doing what I thought was my civic duty, and just as I was getting my family’s life together, is not simply unfair, it’s a tragedy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/20/crystal-mason-texas-upholds-sentence-voter-suppression
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