Tina Peters, Colorado Election Denier, Will Have Prison Sentence Reconsidered
The New York Times • • general
Key Points:
- A Colorado appeals court unanimously overturned the nine-year prison sentence of Tina Peters, a former Mesa County clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines related to the 2020 election, but upheld her conviction.
- The court ruled that the trial judge violated Peters’s free-speech rights by disparaging her during sentencing, and ordered the case to be sent back for resentencing without specifying a new sentence length.
- Peters remains in prison despite President Trump’s ongoing campaign demanding her release, and the court rejected Trump’s attempt to pardon her, stating that presidential pardons do not apply to state offenses.
- The judges emphasized that Peters’s crime was her deceptive actions involving voting machines, not her beliefs about election fraud, which the trial court had improperly criticized during sentencing.
