{"id":122202,"date":"2026-04-02T10:32:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-appeals-court-orders-resentencing-for-tina-peters\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T10:32:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:32:44","slug":"colorado-appeals-court-orders-resentencing-for-tina-peters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-appeals-court-orders-resentencing-for-tina-peters\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado appeals court orders resentencing for Tina Peters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Former
Former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, center, arrives at the Mesa County Justice Center for her trial on Aug. 12, 2024, in Grand Junction. (Larry Robinson\/Grand Junction Sentinel via AP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2012 A Colorado appeals court ruled Thursday that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that sought to prove fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced because a judge wrongly punished her for statements protected as free speech.<\/p>\n

Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes<\/a> for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county\u2019s election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website.<\/p>\n

Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction, but said that a judge should not have considered Peters\u2019 continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024.<\/p>\n

Calls for Peters\u2019 release have become a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre in the election conspiracy movement<\/a>. President Donald Trump has sought unsuccessfully to pardon her and pressured Colorado to set her free.<\/p>\n

One of Peters\u2019 lawyers, John Case, said the court\u2019s ruling affirmed the importance of free speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cTina Peters was punished for words that she used to criticize our insecure and illegal voting system,\u201d he said. \u201cThe decision affirms that people are free to speak what they believe in Colorado as well as the rest of the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Case said he would likely ask at resentencing for Peters to receive the approximately 540 days she\u2019s served already. That would allow her to be freed.<\/p>\n

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in response to the ruling that the original sentence had been \u201cfair and appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk, and threatened our democracy. Nothing will remove that stain,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Peters was the former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, and convicted by jurors in the Republican stronghold that has supported Trump.<\/p>\n

She was unapologetic when she was sentenced<\/a> by Judge Matthew Barrett and insisted that she tried to unearth what she believed was fraud for the greater good. He ripped into her, calling her a \u201ccharlatan\u201d who had used her position to \u201cpeddle snake oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The appeals court found that Barrett violated her rights to free speech by punishing Peters for persistently alleging fraud in the 2020 election. They noted that she is no longer serving as an election clerk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trial court obviously erred by imposing sentence at least partially based on Peters\u2019 protected speech,\u201d Judge Ted Tow wrote in Thursday\u2019s 74-page ruling.<\/p>\n

The court sent Peters\u2019 case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence.<\/p>\n

Trump has threatened to take \u201charsh measures\u201d against Colorado unless the state releases Peters. In February, Trump said Colorado was \u201csuffering a big price\u201d for refusing to release her.<\/p>\n

Weiser, a Democrat who is running for governor, has accused the Trump administration of waging a revenge campaign by choking off funds<\/a> and ending federal programs over the state\u2019s refusal to free Peters.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department inserted itself into her bid to be released while her state appeal was considered. The federal Bureau of Prisons also tried to get Peters moved<\/a> to a federal prison. After both efforts failed, Trump in December announced a pardon<\/a> for Peters.<\/p>\n

However, the appeals court judges said they could find no previous example of a president pardoning someone for a state crime. And they rejected her attorney\u2019s claims that Peters\u2019 actions had been carried out while \u201cdefending a federal interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have found no instance where the presidential pardon power has been stretched in such a way as to invade an individual state\u2019s sovereignty,\u201d they said, adding that the president\u2019s pardon has \u201cno impact\u201d on the state\u2019s case against Peters.<\/p>\n

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said in January that he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence \u201cunusual and harsh\u201d for a first-time, nonviolent offender.<\/p>\n

She was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.<\/p>\n

Peters\u2019 lawyers didn\u2019t deny that she used the security badge of a local man she pretended to hire to allow the an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell<\/a> to make a copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during an annual software update in 2021.<\/p>\n

But they said she only wanted to preserve election data and find out whether any outside actor had accessed the system while ballots were being counted. They said she didn\u2019t want the information made public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

judge wrongly punished her for statements protected as free speech<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6401],"tags":[133,168,1373],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-news","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-litigation"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122202"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}