Tina Peters served as the elected county clerk for Mesa County, Colorado, where she oversaw that county’s elections. She ardently believes President Donald Trump was the victim of election theft in 2020.

In an effort to discover how this could have happened, Peters teamed up with individuals associated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, also a believer that Trump had the election stolen from him. Tina Peters’ opponents falsely alleged she illegally colluded with Lindell’s associate, Conan Hayes, to steal and misuse the ID badge of a Mesa County employee named Gerald Wood to access the county’s election system and to save a copy of the hard drive before a new system was installed.

Indeed, Democrat Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Democrat Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser colluded to bring a 10-count indictment against Peters. Griswold and Weiser are two highly partisan Democrat activists who led the failed effort to throw Trump off the Colorado ballot, leading to a ruling that got reversed 9-0 by the Supreme Court. The two seized the opportunity to up their own political profiles by deploying Robert Shapiro, first attorney general for Special Prosecutions, and Janet Drake, a senior assistant attorney general in the Special Prosecutions Unit, which reports directly to the Colorado attorney general, to spearhead the effort to overcharge and railroad Peters.

In August, a jury found Peters guilty on seven counts: three counts of attempting to influence a public servant; one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation; one count of first-degree official misconduct; one count of violation of duty; and one count of failing to comply with the secretary of state. The jury acquitted her of identity theft; that is, the jury did not find that Peters had used Wood’s badge without his permission. Jurors apparently believed that Wood had been in on the plan, as Peters had claimed.

Judge Goes Off the Deep End

Colorado law permitted Peters to access and archive the hard drive, but she went about things the wrong way. Some accountability, such as probation, a fine, and community service, would have been justified. Peters was clearly overcharged and Judge Matthew Barrett, an appointee of Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, went off the deep end at Peters’ sentencing on Oct. 3.

Peters is 69 years old. She has no criminal record and has experienced tragedy. Her son was a Navy SEAL killed serving his country. Peters will likely never again serve as a county clerk and thus never can engage in the same conduct that brought her to court. Yet Judge Barrett harped on about how, if Peters could do the same thing again, she would. Peters told the judge that she had never broken the law with malice; rather, her sole intent was to root out any fraud that had occurred.

Judge Barrett ended the proceedings with a shocking sentence: nine years’ imprisonment, followed by three years of parole. Nine years. Think of the magnitude of that sentence. Peters altered no election results. Not one vote was changed because of her actions. The judge pointed out that she likely would receive credit for good behavior.

But the judge added a vindictive wrinkle that cut down on the potential for good-behavior credit. He ordered that Peters serve the first year in the Mesa County jail consecutive to her sentence in state prison. County jails house all the population together. There is no minimum security for non-violent offenders like Peters. It’s basically a holding facility with none of the resources that come with state prisons, such as adequate law libraries, outdoor areas, and health facilities. In short, Judge Barrett claimed the sentence would not be quite as harsh as it sounded, but he needlessly made it harsher with his imposition of county jail time rather than a sentence requiring immediate transfer to a state prison.

Violation of First Amendment Rights

Judge Barrett made it clear in his rambling lecture that he was imposing the sentence because Peters continued to question the results of the 2020 election. As an American, Peters has the First Amendment right to question any election result she wishes. Punishment should be derived from actions, not because one refuses to concede an election result. Such a draconian sentence punishes her for core protected political speech.

If Peters had said, “I concede that the election was legitimate,” apparently that would have bought her much more freedom from Judge Barrett. Judge Barrett did not focus nearly as much on Peters’ conduct as he did her refusal to accept the election result. Her steadfastly maintaining her view, rightly or wrongly shared by millions of Americans, is a grossly illegal basis for keeping her in prison for such a long time. It is blatant political viewpoint discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment. It may constitute a criminal depreciation of her constitutional rights under our federal civil-rights statutes, which a future Trump administration Justice Department should fully investigate.

Double Standard

In 2020, deaths, injuries, and billions of dollars in damage occurred as a result of riots by supporters of the leftwing group Black Lives Matter. There were few attempts to minimize the violence. After all, it was being done in the name of “social justice.” How many of those rioters received a sentence like Peters? Certainly none who tried to burn down the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, had the book thrown at them like Peters. What Peters did was, by any objective measure, magnitudes less damaging. She deserved some punishment, one could reasonably argue, but Judge Barrett’s version was cruel and unusual — a punishment that came nowhere close to fitting the crime.

An appellate court must reverse and remand the sentence, as the judge clearly went overboard and illegally focused on Peters’ constitutionally protected viewpoint about election theft. One’s protected political viewpoint must never serve as the basis for such a harsh penalty. On remand, a new judge should impose a far-less severe sentence, including time served. Throwing a 69-year-old in prison for nearly a decade on this record is a gross miscarriage of justice that cannot stand.

In his latest judicial evaluation, Judge Barrett received poor marks from attorneys who appear before him. His overly harsh, clearly illegal sentencing of Tina Peters clearly proves he deserved those scores.

Mike Davis, a Colorado resident, is the founder and president of the Article III Project, which defends constitutionalist judges, fights back against lawfare and radical assaults on judicial independence, and opposes judicial and other nominees who are outside of the mainstream.