Pamela Moses, 44, has been sentenced to six years in prison for voter fraud. Pictured: Moses in an undated mugshot
The founder of Black Lives Matter Memphis has been sentenced to six years in prison for illegally registering to vote after pleading guilty to felonies in 2015.
Pamela Moses, 44, voted illegally six times since she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering, forgery, perjury, stalking and theft under $500, seven years ago.
The activist is now claiming she was unaware she was still on probation, which lasted seven years, and believed her voting rights were reinstated in 2019.
‘I did not falsify anything. All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me and the way the clerk did,’ she said at her sentencing hearing on January 26.
Judge Mark Ward accused Moses of ‘tricking the probation department’ to illegally obtain the right to vote.
He said: ‘You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation. After you were convicted of a felony in 2015, you voted six times as a convicted felon.’
However, Moses argued that when she pleaded guilty in 2015, no one told her she didn’t have the right to vote.
The University of Tennessee graduate, who received a degree in political science from the school, found out she was still on probation in 2019 and after trying to run for mayor. After a judge confirmed it, she visited a probations officer to make sure the her probation was correct. The officer then provided the activist with a certification of completion, which she turned in to receive her right to vote.
The found of Black Lives Matter Memphis, pictured in 2019, pleaded guilty to evidence tampering, forgery, perjury, stalking, and theft under $500, seven years ago and claimed she didn’t realize she was still on probation. She thought she had completed her probation in 2019 after a corrections official gave her a certificate saying she did, despite a judge her otherwise
The mother-of-two told the Guardian last year: ‘They never mentioned anything about voting. They never mentioned anything about not voting, being able to vote…none of that.’
At the time, Tennessee authorities should have taken her off the rolls, but Memphis officials never received the paperwork, the Guardian reported.
She became aware of the problem in 2019 when she tried to run mayor in Memphis and was told she would be unable to due to her felonies. But then officials realized she had never been taken off the registered voter list.
The activist and musician then went to court to see if she was still on probation. Afterward, she went to the probation office to have her sentence confirmed, as she believed it was too long, and an officer signed a certificate saying her probation had ended.
However, days later, a corrections officer wrote an email to an election official saying Moses had not completed her probation and therefore was ineligible to vote, the Guardian reported.
During her trial, prosecutors said Moses knew she was ineligible when she submitted the certificate, as a judge had recently told her she was still on probation.
‘Even knowing that order denied her expiration of sentence, Pamela Moses submitted that form with her application for voter registration and signed an oath as to the accuracy of the information submitted,’ prosecutors wrote. ‘Pamela Moses knowingly made or consented to a false entry on her permanent registration.’
Judge Mark Ward said she ‘tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation’
She is now saying that she was ‘convicted of altering a document that I didn’t even sign,’ the Grio reported.
‘I did not falsify anything. All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me and the way the clerk did,’ she said in January.
Moses was charged with falsely asserting that her probation ended.
Now, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is fighting for her, saying there are ‘two sentencing systems’ in the U.S., as others with similar stories only received probation for voter fraud.
‘Those who intentionally committed voter fraud, they are sentenced to probation,’ Janai Nelson of the Legal Defense Fund said on MSNBC on Saturday.
‘There are two criminal justice systems, two sentencing systems when it comes to these issues and you could not ask for a more stark contrast about justice in our country.’
Moses, who has been in custody since December 10, is expected to appeal the decision.
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