A 43-year-old Texan woman was hit with a five-year prison sentence for the crime of voting in the 2016 presidential election while being on probation.
Crystal Mason, a former tax preparer, had recently been released from prison on a 2012 tax fraud conviction after pleading guilty to falsely inflating returns for her clients when her mother convinced her to vote in the election, said J. Warren St. John, Mason's attorney, while speaking with the Washington Post.
Mason was still on community supervision at the time of the election, but according to St. John, no one - including her probation officer - told her that meant she wasn't allowed to vote.
The woman was charged with illegally casting a ballot in Tarrant County, Tex. and sentenced to five years, despite her insistence that she was unaware of the law and never would have voted if she had known.
“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?" said Mason while speaking with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“She voted in good faith. She showed who she was. Everything was truthful,” St. John said. “Just like she said in court, ‘Why would I want to jeopardize all the work I did to get out of prison, go to the halfway house and get back to my family, if I knew voting was going to get me into prison?”
Source: washingtonpost.com
