On Monday, the founder of the Memphis chapter of Black Lives Matter was sentenced to six years in prison for registering to vote in the state of Tennessee, even though she was forbidden from doing so after a felony conviction in 2015.
The New York Post reports that 44-year-old Pamela Moses was sentenced by Judge Michael Ward, who noted that she “tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation.” Moses had previously been convicted of tampering with evidence and forgery in 2015 after pleading guilty, and had also been convicted of misdemeanor charges of perjury, stalking, theft, and escape
As a result of her sentence, she was put on probation for the next seven years, which included being unable to register to vote or cast a vote. Nevertheless, she attempted to cast a vote in 2019, just four years after her conviction.
At her hearing, Moses claimed that she “did not falsify anything,” and that “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.”
After the sentencing, Moses’ attorney Bede Anyanwu, said that she planned to appeal the sentencing, since “she believes the sentencing was beyond the evidence that was presented.”