The nearly decade-long case of a Black Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison in a controversial illegal voting case will end with an acquittal, the state’s highest criminal court said in a 5-4 decision on Thursday. The woman, Crystal Mason, has been appealing against the case ever since her 2018 conviction for casting a provisional ballot that ultimately wasn’t counted. In 2024, the Texas court of criminal appeals acquitted her in the case.
The local prosecutor handling the case appealed that ruling to Texas’s highest criminal court, which initially agreed to hear it. But on Thursday, the court reversed itself, and said it would not hear an appeal, letting the acquittal stand. It did not offer any explanation for why.
It’s hard to put into words how excited I am right now. This journey has been long, exhausting, and emotional, but God has carried me through it all,” Mason, 51, said in a text message. Phil Sorrells, the Tarrant county district attorney, said in a statement: “Illegal voting remains a crime in Texas.
Mason was on supervised release – which is like probation – for a federal tax felony when she went to her polling place on election day in the 2016 presidential election. When she arrived, officials could not find her on the list of registered voters and offered her a provisional ballot, a safeguard required by federal law, to cast her vote. Poll workers testified that they had Mason swear everything in the affidavit was true, though Mason has always disputed this occurred.
Texas, like many US states, prohibits people with a felony conviction from voting if they are on probation. Even though Mason signed an affidavit saying she was eligible to vote, she maintained she did not actually read the language on it and was never told she could not cast a ballot. Federal probation officials testified at her 2018 trial they never told her she couldn’t vote.
Prosecutors nonetheless argued Mason knew she was eligible because she signed the affidavit and had sworn to poll workers that the information in the ballot was true. Mason has always maintained that testimony poll workers gave at her trial was not true. A judge found her guilty and sentenced her to five years in prison.
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