Crystal Mason’s decade-long fight against an illegal voting conviction ended for good Thursday when Texas’s highest criminal court let her acquittal stand, in a case capped off by an ironic twist involving the very prosecutor’s office that once put her behind bars, The Guardian reported.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 5-4 to drop its review of Mason’s case entirely, reversing course after initially signaling it would take up the matter, and leaving her 2024 acquittal firmly in place without further comment.
Mason had been convicted in 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison for submitting a provisional ballot during the 2016 election while on supervised release for a federal tax felony, a ballot officials determined afterward should not have been included in the final vote tally.
“After 10 long years of fighting, I am overwhelmed with joy and gratitude,” Mason said in a text message.
Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells, whose office pushed to keep the case alive, stood by the years-long prosecution in his own statement, arguing that his office has an obligation to pursue charges whenever evidence shows someone knowingly broke the state’s election rules.
In a striking postscript, Mason said Sorrells’ wife recently came to her door asking her to consider supporting his reelection campaign this year, a moment Mason described as impossible to forget given everything her family had been through with his office.
Mason had always maintained she never knowingly broke the law, testifying she wasn’t told by federal probation officials that her supervised release made her ineligible to vote, despite signing a provisional ballot affidavit poll workers say she swore was accurate. Her case became a flashpoint after Donald Trump began pushing unsubstantiated voter fraud claims following the 2016 election, with critics arguing local prosecutors used her as a political example.
Because her state conviction violated the terms of her federal supervised release, Mason ultimately spent 10 months back in federal prison. During that stretch, financial strain nearly cost the family their home, and her two oldest children stepped up in her absence, with her daughter managing household responsibilities and her son setting aside a college football scholarship to help out.
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