The highest criminal appeals court in Texas will reconsider the illegal-voting charge against a woman whose conviction and five-year prison sentence were overturned earlier this year.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided Wednesday that it would reexamine the case of Crystal Mason, a Fort Worth mother of three who cast a provisional ballot in 2016 and has said she did not know she was ineligible to vote. Her case drew national attention, with voting rights advocates worried about her lengthy sentence despite her vote never being counted.
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting the case and asked the court to take another look at it, five months after another Texas appeals court reversed the conviction.
The district attorney’s office said in a statement to The Washington Post that it was a chance to review whether the state’s “Second Court of Appeals misapplied the legal sufficiency standards of review in overturning” the conviction.
“While I am ready for this case to be over and for my acquittal to stand, I will continue to maintain my faith that justice will be done,” Mason said in a statement from the ACLU, which is representing her.
In 2016, Mason was a 43-year-old former tax preparer who voted only after being encouraged to do so by her mother. But Mason had recently left federal prison on a 2012 tax fraud conviction, The Post has reported, after pleading guilty to inflating returns for her clients.
Texas allows felons to vote if they have finished their sentences, including any incarceration, parole, community supervision or probation, according to the Texas State Law Library. Mason was still on community supervision when she tried to vote, The Post has reported.
An election worker at the polling place gave Mason a provisional ballot; such ballots are subject to review. Mason’s attorney during the 2018 conviction said no one — not even her probation officer — told Mason that she was not allowed to vote while on supervision.
“You think I would jeopardize my freedom? You honestly think I would ever want to leave my babies again? That was the hardest thing in my life to deal with. Who would — as a mother, as a provider — leave their kids over voting?” Mason told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after being indicted.
Mason’s attorney said in 2018 that her five-year sentence for an honest mistake was because of rhetoric from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who still holds the top prosecutor role in the state.
Critics say Texas, under the guise of safeguarding election sanctity, has adopted retrograde laws meant to prevent Democrats and minority communities from voting.
Mason was acquitted in March after a judge with the Texas Second Court of Appeals decided there was not enough evidence to show Mason knew she was ineligible to vote. At the time, her attorneys said the state was trying to make an example out of Mason as part of a crackdown by the Texas GOP to intimidate voters of color. Mason is a Black woman.
Mason in 2019 wrote an opinion piece for The Post. (The Post Opinions section operates separately from the newsroom.)
“The whole thing felt like a nightmare. I kept thinking there had been a mistake,” she wrote of her one-day trial. “Never did I think casting a ballot was something that could get you in trouble.”
Mason is back in court, but her legal team is hopeful.
“Crystal Mason’s acquittal was based on a record that did not support her conviction,” Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said Wednesday. “We are confident the Court of Criminal Appeals will agree and uphold the decision.”
