Exactly @rocketsjudoka You can't just keep glossing over this. It's not like she got a couple felonies as a teenager. On the issue of whether the judge is biased saying she tricked the probation office she has the history.
I would just like to know what she did to "trick" the probation officer. That seems to be the key to how extreme the punishment should or shouldn't be. I think we would all agree that a probation officer shouldn't simply take the word of a felon on probation that her probation period is over. If all she did was say, "here is why I believe my probation is over" and then gives her version then that should not be trickery. Even if she flat out lies, the officer should be required to verify prior to believing her. And, if it was proven that she lied, then she never wound have been given an opportunity to register and should have been charged with whatever crime lying to a probation officer is.
Sure. 6 years for improperly registering is harsh (though remember that the judge is offering probation after 9 months with good behavior). Apparently, the law required a sentence between 4 and 8 years. I think probably this sort of thing shouldn't be prosecuted at all -- just take her off the voting rolls -- but getting more familiar with the story, I kinda get it. I'll have to retract that. If my googling was good, in Tennessee after 1982, judges do the sentencing, even in jury trials, except in death penalty or life-without-parole cases. I also read the Guardian article that has some good links to other articles, and some of her court documents here, which unfortunately doesn't have everything. Ok, now the story as I understand it (but I'm looking from afar, and I'm no lawyer, so read at your own risk). Moses pleads guilty to numerous counts in 2015. She serves a day in jail and then is on probation. One of them permanently disenfranchises her supposedly (I see this in the newspaper, but not the court docs I've found). The others form a complicated algorithm for how long her probation is. This court document explains that, but it's complicated and I'm not sure I get it. (She tries to withdraw the guilty plea but isn't allowed to. Not sure that matters though.) After her day in jail, she votes several times while not knowing she's not supposed to. She was never told. The voter rolls are screwed up too of course, so her votes are counted. She runs for office in 2019 and gets disqualified because of her conviction. Election officials find out she's on the voter rolls and remove her. She goes to a court and asks the judge to rule that her probated sentence was over after 4 years, circa 2018 (according to her calculations). That judge finds that she's mistaken, that her probation is 7 years and will end in 2022. (That document does not mention the tampering with evidence charge that's supposed to permanently disenfranchise her according to the papers.) And here is where she seems to screw up. After the judge has ruled she is ineligible, she goes to the probation office to ask for a certificate of restoration of voting rights. They give it to her (they don't say, but it looks like rules about consecutive and concurrent sentences are convoluted and confusing so a probation officer could make the same mistake she did) and she submits with her voter registration. The next day, the probation office retracts it. Which is where people will say 'no fair!' But, she was already told by the court that she is still serving her sentence and not eligible. The authority of a parole officer doesn't supercede that of a judge. She was formally told she couldn't vote but she wouldn't accept the court's finding and persisted with the registration. I don't think they really had to charge her, but I also understand them wanting to do something about the willful defiance of the court. So, does she get a raw deal? Yeah, somewhat. Our dysfunctional bureaucracy let her make mistakes. If the parole officer knew when her sentence actually expired, he wouldn't have given her a document to break the law with. It's crazy that there is any lack of clarity on the date of the end of anyone's prison sentence. Did she bring this trouble on herself. Yes. The court told her no voting at least till mid-2022, and she should have listened. Did she 'trick' the probation officer? I still don't know. Does the original article give the reader a proper understanding of what went down? Not really. It mentions she went to court to clarify the length of her sentence and was told she was still on probation but would leave the voter eligibility to the criminal court. That was before July 9, 2019, when she filed an appeal to the criminal court. On September 3, 2019, she filed her certificate of voter registration from the parole officer. On January 7, 2020, the appeals court re-affirms she didn't have the right to vote because she was still serving her sentence. The article leaves the reader with the impression that there was an open question about her eligibility when she filed on Sep 3, but there wasn't. She was ineligible until a court said she was eligible, but she filed anyway. The article wants to give the reader the impression that she filed her registration in good faith, not knowing she was ineligible, and was led down the wrong path by a bureaucrat. But she had just been in a whole court proceeding in which she was told she was still on probation and that she would have to ask another court for the restoration of her voting rights. She might not have realized that registering to vote would be a crime, but she must have known she was not eligible until the appeals court decided.
One of the most serious incidents was when Moses pleaded guilty in 2015 to a 10-count indictment, including perjury and tampering with evidence. She allegedly stalked and harassed a Shelby County judge between in 2014 by impersonating a lawyer and notary public in an effort to file a complaint against the judge, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Moses was given an eight-year suspended sentence, and the judge in that case ordered that she serve the time on probation. Although the charge of tampering with evidence is one of the few felonies in Tennessee that causes someone to permanently lose their voting rights in the state, she told the Guardian last year that no one explained to her that pleading guilty meant she’d be ineligible to vote. You have to appreciate her dedication to voting either way. Most people with 16 felony convictions would just give up.
How is getting a piece of paper from her probation officer defying the court? They could have just refused to take the paperwork if that's what they wanted to do but they said never said defiance they said she tried to deceive the court. She did not lie or do anything detrimental to the court she just tried to exhaust all of her options and she said her probation officer said she would be eligible and then got the paperwork to back up what she was told but for some reason you think its defying the court and even if it was "defying" the court how does that equate to 9 months jail time IF you get early release. I have no idea why you think getting a letter from your probation officer means you get jail time? How does any of that make sense? Even if what you said is true, how does in your mind that equates to jail time? Can you give examples of people getting 5 years for "defying" the court by turning in paperwork?
well if that political hack Turley argues the sentence is excessive, you have to know that she probably deserves DOUBLE the sentence she received Tennessee Woman Receives Six Years in Prison for Illegally Registering to Vote in 2020 https://jonathanturley.org/2022/02/07/voting/ excerpt: Even if the court is correct about her intentional deception, six years strikes me as quite excessive. I understand that the crime also violated her probation but six years is a sentence that we usually see for violent felonies. so clearly she deserves the death penalty . . . or worse.
He probably doesn't want the unflattering comparison to Pamela Moses made when Trumpers get sentenced to community service when they vote illegally.
Again though this is why many states have turned against mandatory sentencing and things like 3 strikes where someone could commit something very mild but because of prior record they receive a very harsh sentence. In the original posts there is background too on the felonies and many of those are around one or two incidences where she pled guilty as part of a plea bargain. Even so with those this type of sentence appears very harsh relative to other cases where actual fraud was commited.
Thank you for looking into it further. FYI the original article at the start of the thread does give some background on Moses' history and her convictions. While 9 months with the chance for probation with good behavior sounds good I will repeat again in other cases where actual voter fraud was committed apparently with full knowledge by the perpetrator they didn't serve any jail time at all.
I was specially responding to the judge's accusation of intentionally fooling the probation officials. Why give her the benefit of the doubt? This isn't an average felony. She ran for mayor. There seems to be a lot more to this story
Yes it doesn't sound like your average felony. It sounds like an actual crime wasn't committed and to that the county officials themselves gave her conflicting information. As far as her running for mayor I don't know what that has much to do with it. It doesn't sound like she was much of a serious candidate or had any chance to win. If the judged did give her a harsh sentence because she ran for mayor that would be a very clear sign of judicial bias.
Now I've got to look for court documents in all these other cases? I never did say the disparity in outcomes was fair. I took umbrage at the sob story the article served up and people getting predictably outraged without bothering with the details. There are differences between states on how harshly they punish election fraud. There are differences in how much latitude they allow courts in sentencing (it looks like TN doesn't allow much). There are differences in how much previous convictions count. Then you've got prosecutorial discretion plus the idiosyncratic differences between offenders and the quality of their lawyers. Plus racism, sexism, political career considerations and other issues that shouldn't be part of the process but are. So we get widely disparate outcomes and it's really hard to compare to see which are the significant drivers. I think I'd start by being specific about which states convictions come in. I looked, but I couldn't find another Tennessee case of voter fraud to compare to Pamela Moses. Obviously, it's unfair that some get off easy and others get 6 in the pen. But you can't fix it without understanding it. I'm not sure her longshot mayoral run mattered. But I did see some reference to her being a "known character" in the courts. Which is probably not surprising for a BLM activist. Maybe she's being oppressed for her activism; maybe she's a troublemaker, I don't know. Her big conviction was for stalking a judge (she pled guilty but later tried and failed to retract her plea). She also tried to get a restraining order on a sheriff and sued for defamatory comments from a county commissioner. I even found a case of her fighting a traffic ticket and saying her rights to a fair trial were violated. I'm not saying she shouldn't stand up for her rights and avail herself of the courts. But, I would not be surprised if she had a negative reputation with some in the local court system who might have thought her activism stepped over a line. As for fooling the probation officer, it doesn't look like that's what she was convicted of. The judge probably shouldn't have said it. He just seemed to me annoyed that she would pretend like she didn't know she was trying to make an end-run around the courts with the certificate she got.
