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Search resuls for: "Crystal Mason"


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When a Texas appeals court reversed itself last week and acquitted Crystal Mason, a mother of three, in a voting fraud case, it ended almost a decade in which Ms. Mason lived in fear of being torn away from her family and imprisoned. In 2018, she was sentenced to a five-year prison term for illegally casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election. While the prosecution of Ms. Mason may have failed, it still could have broader consequences in chilling people’s willingness to exercise their right to vote. Few would want to vote if it means going through what Ms. Mason did. As such, the reversal in her case cannot undo much of the damage that irresponsible Texas prosecutors wrought.
Persons: Crystal Mason, Mason, Mason’s Locations: Texas
In a case that has prompted outrage from voting-rights activists for years, a Texas appeals court reversed itself on Thursday and acquitted a woman who had been sentenced to five years in prison for illegally casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election. The decision came two years after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, ruled that the lower appeals court, the Second Court of Criminal Appeals, had misconstrued the illegal voting statute under which Crystal Mason was found guilty in 2018. Ms. Mason, 49, of Fort Worth, had been charged with illegally voting in the 2016 general election by casting a provisional ballot while she was a felon on probation. Ms. Mason, who has remained free on bond, appealed her conviction. In 2020, the Second Court of Appeals ruled that whether or not she knew she was ineligible to vote was “irrelevant to the prosecution.”
Persons: Crystal Mason, Mason, Organizations: Texas, Appeals Locations: Texas, Fort Worth
The proposals have alarmed voting rights activists and state Democrats, who tried and failed last year to block a GOP-backed overhaul of election laws — a priority of Gov. The 62 voting rights-related bills Texas lawmakers have already prefiled represent nearly all prefiled voting rights legislation across the country, according to a review of prefiled bills by Voting Rights Lab and NBC News. An election police forceRepublican-authored Texas bills, such as HB 549 and SB 220, propose creating a system of state “election marshals,” who would investigate allegations of violations of election and voting laws, and file criminal charges when warranted. Harsher penaltiesLegislation such as HB 39, HB 52, HB 222, HB 397 and SB 166 aims to raise the penalty for election and voting rights crimes to a felony from a misdemeanor. “All my bill does is restore the felony punishment for illegal voting,” Texas Rep. David Spiller, the author of HB 52, said in an interview.
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