Just another reason to not trust Texas law enforcement. There are already questions about the police’s handling of the Atatiana Jefferson case, a 28-year-old who shot in her own home on Oct. 12. Now it’s being reported the person who will be managing the case is Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson. She is the person who initiated the case against single mother Crystal Mason in February 2017 for voting.
See Also: Black Woman Sentenced To Five Years In Prison For Illegally Voting
Mason, a mother of three, was sentenced twice, once each for violating state law and once for violating federal law.
First, she was sentenced in to serve five years in prison for violating Texas’ voter laws. As a former convict at the time, she was ineligible to vote under state regulations. By casting a ballot in the November 2016 election, she was in violation of a law that many ex-convicts are unaware of.
That state voter fraud conviction led to a federal judge giving Mason a second charge to 10 months in prison plus probation for violating the terms of her supervised release from federal prison for tax fraud. She served her time and is now facing 5 years in state prison.
However, Wilson has been accused of an election-related mistake of her own one year earlier, Appeal.org reported. The DA reportedly asked her staff for personal contact information and then used it to solicit funds from them for her re-election bid. Legal experts disagreed whether that was a criminal offense. But what was certain is that she went too far in punishing Mason for not understanding state voter laws.
What made Wilson’s heartless prosecution all the more appalling was that she was far more lenient on a fellow Republican justice of the peace who pleaded guilty in April to election fraud involving forgery. Judge Russ Casey received probation on his two-year sentence for turning in fake signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot in March.
Considering this, Wilson being involved in the Jefferson case is not comforting.
On early Saturday morning, an officer responded to call from a concerned neighbor who requested a wellness check. Jefferson died about 2:30 a.m. local time after the officer killed her in her own home by shooting his gun through a window. Jefferson was reportedly playing video games with her nephew and was allegedly shot within four seconds of the officer arriving.
Color of Change said in a statement about Sharen Wilson, “We also call for the launch of an independent investigation and the appointment of a special prosecutor, because we do not trust Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson’s record on either police misconduct or fair treatment for the Black community.”
We truly hope the Jefferson family gets justice.
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