PD-0300-24 08/21/2024
“Did the appellate court misapply the legal sufficiency standard of review by:
• crediting Appellant’s self-serving testimony which the trial court reasonably could have disregarded; and/or
• resolving an ambiguity in Appellant’s testimony in Appellant’s favor; and/or
• reweighing evidence in favor of the defense; and/or
• ignoring evidence that supported the verdict; and/or
• applying sufficiency analyses long rejected by this Court; and/or
• failing to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict[?]”
In 2011, Mason pleaded guilty to a federal felony. In 2016, Mason was on federal supervised release when she completed a provisional ballot form and cast a vote in a general election. The form required her to swear that, if a felon, she had completed all punishment including any term of supervision. She was charged with violating TEX. ELEC. CODE § 64.012(a)(1), knowingly or intentionally “vot[ing] or attempt[ing] to vote in an election in which the person knows the person is not eligible to vote.” At her bench trial, multiple witnesses said she was told to read the entire form before signing it and that she appeared to read the provisional ballot form. Mason claimed she never read it but said anyone who had would know she was ineligible to vote. Mason reviewed and signed a similar form when she voted in 2004. She was convicted and it was affirmed. Upon previous review, the Court of Criminal Appeals clarified that the offense requires that Mason knew she was ineligible to vote, not just that she was on supervised release. Mason v. State, 663 S.W.3d 621, 632 (Tex. Crim. App. 2022). It remanded for further review.
On remand, the court of appeals found the evidence to prove that knowledge insufficient. It paid special attention to Mason’s testimony that she did not read the warnings on the form she signed and that anyone who said otherwise was not truthful. It acknowledged that the trial court could have disbelieved Mason’s claims but also that such disbelief does not equate to affirmative evidence. As for Mason’s acknowledgment that anyone who read the form would know she was not eligible to vote, it said the form was not explicit enough to prove her actual realization of her ineligibility notwithstanding her admission. It concluded that the fact that she had provisionally voted once before made it less likely—not more likely—that she did not understand the form’s contents. The court of appeals also dismissed other circumstantial evidence of guilt by providing alternative innocent explanations for it.
The State argues that the court of appeals did everything the Court of Criminal Appeals has repeatedly said not to do with sufficiency review, and that the evidence of her knowledge of ineligibility is readily proven beyond a reasonable doubt when viewed collectively in the light most favorable to the verdict.
