Tarrant DA defends decision to pursue re-conviction of Crystal Mason, acquitted of illegal voting after 8 years

The Tarrant County District Attorney is facing backlash from the community and some county leaders for trying to re-convict a woman who was acquitted of voting illegally.

Fort Worth grandmother Crystal Mason was jailed in 2018 after trying to vote while on supervised release from federal prison.

She was acquitted of the charge in March, but the DA is pushing the state’s highest criminal court to review that decision and convict Mason again.

In Tuesday’s meeting of the Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court which was packed with Mason’s supporters, Tarrant DA Phil Sorrells defended his decision to push for Mason to be convicted once again.

“This case, it’s a published opinion, can be cited for a proposition that this is how you review sufficiency cases,” Sorrells said of the decision that overturned Mason’s conviction. “And it’s wrong.”

In 2016 while on supervised release from a felony tax fraud conviction, Mason tried to vote in the November general election, submitting a provisional ballot.

She was charged with illegal voting and convicted in 2018, sentenced to five years in prison.

Mason’s legal team appealed repeatedly, claiming that Mason was incorrectly convicted because at the time she submitted her provisional ballot she didn’t know that she had been ineligible to vote.

On March 28, Texas’s Second Court of Appeals reversed its earlier ruling and acquitted Mason.

The decision said a poll worker testified that while trying to vote in 2016, Mason said she didn’t know why her name wasn’t on the list of registered voters, and she brought her ID to verify her identity.

In its ruling, the court said the state’s evidence against Mason, “was not sufficient––even in the context of the rest of the evidence in this case––to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mason actually knew that being on supervised release after having served her entire federal sentence of incarceration made her ineligible to vote by casting a provisional ballot when she did so.”

“Where is my intention to commit a crime?” Crystal Mason said during Tuesday’s commissioner’s court meeting. “I thought I was eligible to vote, I finished my time in feds.”

A month after Mason was acquitted, the Tarrant DA petitioned the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to review the decision and reinstate her conviction.

Phil Sorrells said the process the court used to examine the case didn’t correctly follow the law and could impact future appeals cases involving a range of different crimes, including theft and murder.

He also said pursuing this case was important for election security.

“I want would-be illegal voters to know that we’re watching,” Sorrells said. “And that we’ll follow the law and we will prosecute illegal voting.”

One county leader pushed back: Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons questioned if Mason really violated any election rules by filing a provisional ballot, which wouldn’t be counted until election officials confirmed Mason was truly eligible to vote.

“So she didn’t vote?” Simmons asked the DA.

“She did vote, she cast a provisional ballot which is the same as voting,” Sorrells responded.

“That didn’t count, where is the ballot, what happened to the ballot?” Simmons asked.

“I can’t tell you what happened to the ballot, I’m not the Elections Administrator so I don’t know where the ballot is ma’am,” Sorrells said.

Every speaker who signed up to comment on the DA’s presentation spoke in favor of Mason.

“Why is my taxpayer money being spent on this, something that happened eight years ago with a five-year conviction?” one Tarrant resident asked the board.

As Crystal Mason faced yet another fight in the courtroom, she claimed the case against her came down to politics – not justice.

“How was I supposed to know?” Mason asked. “This is overwhelming, this is sickening, and I’m so glad that I have the community here supporting this and seeing this.”

NBC 5 is reaching out to the Tarrant DA’s office to find out if there’s any timeline for when Mason’s case could be heard again.