The court says Pamela Moses altered documents to trick probation officers, but the 44-year-old activist claims she only did what she was told.
By World Israel News Staff
The founder of the Black Lives Matter movement in Memphis, Tennessee was sentenced to six years in prison on Sunday for illegally registering to vote after pleading guilty to felonies in 2015, U.S. media has reported.
Activist Pamela Moses voted illegally six times since she pleaded guilty seven years ago to evidence tampering, forgery, perjury, stalking and theft under $500.
Judge Michael Ward, who handled Moses’s case, accused her of having ‘tricked the probation department’ in order to obtain her right to vote.
In 2019, Moses tried to run for mayor but soon learned that she was still under probation. After confirming that her probation was correct with a judge, she turned to a probations officer who provided her with a certificate of completion. Moses turned over the certificate to receive the right to vote.
A short time later, a corrections officer notified an election official that Moses had not completed her probation and therefore could not vote.
Prosecutors said that Moses was aware she was not permitted to vote when she turned in her certificate in 2019, but her attorney, Bede Anyanwu, said she intends to appeal the sentencing.
Moses argued that when she was placed on probation seven years ago, no one told her that she didn’t have the right to vote. She claims that she is being convicted of altering a document that she “did not even sign.”
In last month’s hearing, she said that she “fid 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.”