How do you get a nine-year prison sentence for something that gets someone else 20 days if you don’t have any prior record? Simple: You have the Wrong Political Beliefs™ and you’re in the state of Colorado.
Thankfully, even Coloradans — particularly the state’s appeals court — seem to believe that’s a bit harsh, and that means that former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters could be out of prison sooner rather than much later.
On Thursday, the appeals court threw out the original sentence handed down to Peters, an election integrity advocate, in 2024 for allowing a conservative activist access to parts of the Mesa County system in an attempt to see if there had been fraud in the 2020 election.
The 3-0 ruling kept Peters’ conviction for the data breach but found that the judge violated Peters’ First Amendment rights by taking her political views into account during sentencing, according to The New York Times.
“The trial court’s comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”
The sentencing judge in the case, District Judge Matthew Barrett, had described Peters in terms the Times characterized as “a snake-oil saleswoman who peddled false claims that the 2020 election had been rigged against Mr. Trump.”
“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett said when he handed down the sentence in 2024, according to The Associated Press.
“You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan … It’s just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people fawning over you,” he added.
The case will now go back to the trial court in Mesa County for resentencing.
However, the appeals court also found that President Donald Trump’s attempts to pardon Peters were null, noting that “the President’s pardon does not reach Peters’s state offenses.”
“We are unaware of — and can find no historical record of — any instance of a president pardoning someone for a state offense,” the judges wrote.
🚨 HUGE NEWS: Following IMMENSE pressure from President Trump and patriots across the country, an appeals court in Colorado has THROWN OUT Tina Peters’ sentence
Per the court, the 9-year sentence VIOLATED her 1st Amendment rights.
This is a HUGE step towards freeing Tina Peters… pic.twitter.com/2euX5Hc69m
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 2, 2026
However, Trump’s power of the pardon may not be needed. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has intimated he’s leaning toward clemency, in part because the Trump administration has pressured Colorado by moving federal resources away over their handling of the case.
Polis applauded the decision Thursday, saying it exemplified “equal justice for all” and that Peters’ sentence was an “obvious outlier.”
Which, yes; as The Denver Post noted, a Routt County man was sentenced to 20 days in prison for election fraud just months before Peters’ nine-year sentence.
Colorado’s Democratic attorney general, however, was far less generous and still maintained that her political beliefs should factor into her sentence:
BREAKING—The Court of Appeals ruled that Tina Peters was appropriately convicted of serious crimes, she will serve a serious sentence, and the President cannot pardon her. My statement is below. pic.twitter.com/0J6ZXm6oZF
— Phil Weiser (@pweiser) April 2, 2026
Peters’ supporters celebrated the Colorado court’s decision.
🚨
The Colorado Court of Appeals confirms what we’ve said for years:
Mesa County District Court Judge Matthew Barrett illegally persecuted Tina Peters for her First Amendment-protected political views.
9 years in prison.
For a 69-year-old woman.
Because Barrett didn’t like…
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) April 2, 2026
“The Colorado Court of Appeals confirms what we’ve said for years: Mesa County District Court Judge Matthew Barrett illegally persecuted Tina Peters for her First Amendment-protected political views,” said Mike Davis of the Article III Project.
“Barrett is a garbage human being. He shouldn’t be on the bench.”
One thing at a time, one thing at a time. At the very least, the good news is that, if justice has any currency left in Colorado, Tina Peters could soon be a free woman.
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