The founder of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Memphis has been sentenced to prison for six years for illegally registering to vote in Tennessee, prosecutors said.
Pamela Moses, the 44-year-old activist, was ordered to spend six years and one day behind bars Monday for registering to vote despite felony convictions in 2015 that made her ineligible to do so, Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said.
In handing down the sentence, Judge Michael Ward accused her of deceiving the probation department to obtain the right to vote,
“You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” Ward said in court, the Washington Post reported.
In 2015, Moses pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and forgery, both felonies, and to misdemeanor charges of perjury, stalking, theft under $500, and escape.
She was placed on probation for seven years and deemed ineligible to vote in Tennessee because of the tampering with evidence charge.
Moses has maintained that she was under the impression that her voting rights had been restored when she went to vote in 2019.
“I did 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,” she said at the hearing.
Her attorney, Bede Anyanwu, said his client plans to appeal the sentencing.
“She believes the sentencing was beyond the evidence that was presented,” he told the Washington Post.