Voting Conviction Overturned In Texas

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Crystal Mason, middle, along with her authorized group in 2018. | Supply: Crystal Mason

On Thursday, an appeals courtroom in Texas overturned the conviction and the egregiously absurd five-year sentence handed to a Black lady for a criminal offense she arguably ought to by no means have been charged with within the first place.

In keeping with the Texas Tribune, the Tarrant County-based Second Court docket of Appeals formally acquitted Crystal Mason, who was charged with a felony for casting a provisional poll in 2016 whereas on supervised launch for a federal conviction, which she didn’t know made her ineligible to vote.

“I’m overjoyed to see my religion rewarded right now,” Mason stated in a press release. “I used to be thrown into this struggle for voting rights and can maintain swinging to make sure nobody else has to face what I’ve endured for over six years, a political ploy the place minority voting rights are below assault.”

“I’ve cried and prayed each evening for over six years straight that I’d stay a free Black lady,” she continued. “I thank everybody whose dedication and help carried me via this time and look ahead to celebrating this second with my household and pals.”

Mason, who has had her life upended for seven years behind this case, has all the time maintained that she was unaware she wasn’t eligible to vote, and, when it comes all the way down to it, there was by no means a motive to consider she did. In actual fact, the courtroom stated in its choice that no proof had ever been introduced that proved she knowingly tried to vote illegally, “which is a situation that should be met with a purpose to convict her of unlawful voting,” the Tribune famous.

Regardless of the shortage of proof, Mason is barely being cleared of all wrongdoing after the so-called justice system labored rattling exhausting to deal with a Black lady’s life prefer it doesn’t actually matter by taking away her freedom for a frivolous motive.

From the Tribune:

The Second Court docket of Appeals initially upheld her conviction however two years in the past was instructed by the Texas Court docket of Felony Appeals to “consider the sufficiency” of the proof in opposition to Mason, saying that the decrease courtroom had “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had precise information that it was a criminal offense for her to vote whereas on supervised launch.”

What number of courts does it take to unscrew a white supremacist mild bulb?

Significantly, until they’ve discovered express proof of intentional voter fraud, authorized officers really want to ask themselves why they’re so keen to place Black individuals, or anybody for that matter, in jail for any time in any respect simply because they don’t have skilled information on all of the ins and outs relating to what makes an individual eligible to solid a vote.

Of, course, whereas nobody needs to be locked up for this sort of factor, it’s tough to not discover that, like in all issues “justice” system associated, Black persons are disproportionately susceptible to falling sufferer to having their lives ruined by petty authorized technicalities, comparable to within the instances of Mason, and Pamela Moses, one other Black lady, who was sentenced to 6 years in jail after she was convicted of registering to vote whereas being ineligible to take action due to previous authorized points, a conviction that was additionally later overturned. (In that case, she actually had a kind signed by her probation officer that stated she may legally vote, and prosecutors argued she conned her PO into signing it. Like—bruh!)

In actual fact, proper now of us on social media are noting the hanging variations in Mason’s remedy in comparison with that of Georgia Republican Occasion official Brian Pritchard, who voted illegally whereas ineligible resulting from a felony conviction not as soon as, however 9 instances and was solely penalized with a $5,000 wonderful.

Moreover Prichard, who, curiously sufficient, promoted Donald Trump’s “large lie” about voter fraud costing him his second time period, quite a few white Republican voters have been sentenced to probation and/or given small fines for voting illegally throughout the identical time interval when Mason, Rose and different Black individuals have been drowning in authorized woes and being thrown in jail all as a result of they weren’t conscious it was unlawful for them to have a say of their nation’s electoral course of.

That is America.