Jailed Over Voting Error, Pamela Moses Says Her Situation Is Part Of A ‘Scare Tactic’
Pamela Moses, who was convicted in November 2021 of illegally registering to vote in 2019 and sentenced to six years in prison is speaking out.
She was released from prison on bond on February 25 after a judge granted her request for a new trial, citing evidence that had not been disclosed to Moses’ defense. The case against her, she says, is a “scare tactic” in order to discourage other people from casting a ballot.
In her first interview since being freed, Moses, 44, said she was “overwhelmed with joy” over being granted a new trial but believes that other people with criminal convictions will think twice before trying to vote knowing about what happened to her.
“It’s like, ‘if she went to jail for that, we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to follow her because we’re going to be in jail for six years too.’ I would say it sends a confusing message to people who want to vote,” she told The Guardian. “Why should people be worried if they’re going to be prosecuted for doing their civic duty?”
A well-known civil rights activist in Memphis, Moses has filed numerous cases in local and federal courts, often representing herself. She says she believes she’s being “persecuted” for being outspoken against numerous local officials.
“If you silence the loudest person that’s screaming, ‘hey Black people, go vote, don’t vote for her, remove her from office’ then you eliminate the opposition,” she said. “I believe, not only if I wasn’t Black, but if my name wasn’t Pamela Moses, this probably never would have been a case.”
Moses maintains she was unaware she was ineligible to vote and was joined by a dozen community members on Feb. 4 at a press conference protesting the sentencing in Memphis. Attendees gathered in the midst of an ice storm, holding signs like, “Trying to vote is not a crime” and “Justice for Pamela.”
According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Just City Executive Director Josh Spickler said considering the spike in violent crime in the Memphis area, Moses’ “paper case” should not have even been prosecuted, let alone reach a conviction and sentence to this extent.
“And yet this system, those same elected officials, have used incredible amounts of resources in a time when there’s a backlog in this justice system unlike any we’ve seen before, they use resources to try and…convict this woman for trying to vote,” Spickler said.
In 2015, Moses pleaded guilty to two felonies and three misdemeanors, which led to her receiving probation for seven years. The felony convictions made her ineligible to vote in Tennessee permanently.
The sentencing judge accused Moses of deceiving officials but she argued that she believed her voting rights had been restored when she researched voting in 2019.
"This is the very definition of a nonviolent crime," Spickler said in an earlier interview with the Commercial Appeal. "It involves paper, the only things that happened that were criminal, potentially, were things written on pieces of paper. The travesty here is that what happens next is, she can appeal, and it sounds like she probably will, but she's gonna be in jail or prison unless something remarkable happens."
According to The Guardian, in 2019 Moses ran for mayor of Memphis before being told by Shelby County Elections officials she couldn’t appear on the ballot because of her felony conviction. While looking into her eligibility, the officials also realized Moses hadn’t been taken off the voting rolls.
Moses subsequently went to court and asked a judge to clarify whether she was still on probation, and the court confirmed that she was.
After that, Moses went to the local probation office and asked an officer to figure out if the judge had calculated her sentence correctly. The officer then confirmed her probation had ended via a certificate and Moses submitted it to local election officials along with a voter registration form.
An official at the corrections department later contacted the election officials and said that Moses was still serving an active felony sentence and was not eligible to vote, admitting that the officer made an error. Moses was later charged, and sentenced, for trying to register to vote, not for casting a ballot.
