August 5, 2022

In January, Pamela Moses, a Black Memphis woman with a previous felony conviction, was sentenced to six years and one day in prison, prompting outrage from voting rights supporters. Moses tried to restore her right to vote in 2019. She never should have been charged, really.

And now the Republican Tennessee DA will have to face off with voters after taking Moses to trial.

Shelby County DA Amy Weirich took Moses to trial for illegally registering to vote, and then trumpeted her conviction and sentence when a Memphis judge sent Moses to prison for six years in January. The case sparked an outcry after The Guardian revealed that the state had given Moses faulty guidance and had already identified its error at the time of the conviction. The judge pointed to prosecutors' failure to disclose evidence showing that Moses had been misled to order a new trial and Weirich then announced that she would drop the charges.

"Nobody, including Pam Moses, should ever face criminal charges for attempting to restore their voting rights," said Tikeila Rucker, an organizer with the group Memphis for All. "How or why DA Weirich sent a community activist, advocate, and voting rights activist to jail for six years is incomprehensible."

Moses also believes she was targeted due to her race, political beliefs, and public activism on behalf of Black Lives Matter. "I think that the goal was to scare people," she told Bolts shortly after being released in March, "but it could boomerang."

On Thursday, we'll see if that boomerang takes effect for Weirich when voters will decide whether to keep her in office or not. Weirich will face off with Democratic nominee Steven Mulroy, who, I hope, put out some ads showing Weirich locking up a Black Tennesean for having the audacity to want to vote. Because Weirich needs to be retired.

Quick question: Why isn't former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows being charged after he claimed to live in a small mobile home in North Carolina on his voter registration form?

UPDATE: She lost.

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