The state’s highest criminal court on Thursday rejected an appeal from prosecutors seeking to reinstate the 2018 conviction of Crystal Mason, a Fort Worth woman sentenced to five years in prison for illegally casting a ballot that wasn’t counted in 2016.
Four of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ nine all-Republican judges filed opinions disagreeing with the outcome.
In an unsigned opinion, the majority said the court had mistakenly accepted an appeal from prosecutors who sought to overturn a ruling by the Fort Worth-based 2nd Court of Appeals, which reversed Mason’s conviction in 2024. The 2nd Court said prosecutors did not prove Mason knew she was ineligible to vote — a necessary step under state law.
“Having examined the record and the briefs, we conclude that our decision to grant review was improvident,” the majority opinion said without providing reasons for coming to that conclusion.
Judges David Schenck, Kevin Yeary, Lee Finley and Gina Parker filed separate dissenting opinions.
Yeary, who is running for reelection, and Finley said they believed enough evidence was provided to show Mason knowingly cast an illegal vote.
“The only question the Court granted review of today is: whether the evidence was sufficient to support a jury finding beyond a reasonable doubt on one of the discrete constituent elements of the greater offense: the culpable mental state,” Yeary wrote. “I believe that it is.”
Finley also complained that the majority did not provide an explanation for its ruling.
“The citizens of this State are owed some explanation from this Court for why it now refuses to act on the critical issue of election integrity,” Finley wrote. “The State of Texas, as a party in this case, deserves as much.”
Mason said she was relieved to move on from the legal “nightmare.”
“In all these years, I never lost my faith that justice would be done,” she said in a statement. “I hope people who hear my story are encouraged to make their voices heard and to get out and vote. If the right to vote weren’t so important, they wouldn’t be trying to take it away.”
See here for the previous update. This case has been litigated to death, and it was bullshit from the beginning. What Crystal Mason deserved was for the CCA to decline to take up this appeal in the first place. This will have to do. May she finally have some peace now that this is over.