At this point, it doesn’t matter who is at fault.

 No one really cares if the Tennessee Department of Correction dropped the ball or if at least some of the blame lies with the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office.

Local activist sentenced to six years for illegally registering to vote

 All that matters now is that a murky criminal case over a contested right to vote has gotten murkier. It couldn’t come at a worse time for District Attorney General Amy Weirich, who is running for another eight-year term as the county’s chief prosecutor. And it’s time for the murkiness to end.

The case in question involves Pamela Moses, an activist connected with the local Black Lives Matter movement. Moses has been in and out of legal trouble for more than two decades. In fact, this is one instance where Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn would be right for a change. Moses does have a rap sheet long as the proverbial arm.

 It includes felony convictions for aggravated assault, forgery and tampering with evidence — along with several misdemeanor convictions for harassment, perjury, vandalism and theft.

But it’s her most recent case that has made Moses — depending on who’s talking — either a victim of the Republican hysteria over manufactured voter fraud or Exhibit A of the fact that such fraud does indeed exist.

Moses, 44, was convicted in November of illegally attempting to register to vote in 2019 while she was still on probation for criminal convictions from 2015. Her defense was that she thought her probation was over, even though a court had told her it was still in force.

Despite what the court said, Moses sought and got a signed certificate from the state Department of Correction stating she was no longer under probation. And she used the document to seek restoration of her voting rights.

The prosecuting attorney from Weirich’s office, Criminal Court Judge W. Mark Ward and, more importantly, a jury did not buy Moses’ story. They concluded that she tricked the probation officer into signing a piece of paper that Moses knew was false.

In January, Ward sentenced her to six years in prison with the possibility of release after nine months. And almost immediately, the case garnered national attention — notably by The Guardian — as an example of prosecutorial overreach in the name of voter integrity, a talking point catchphrase that’s near and dear to Republicans. The conviction and sentence also raised the specter of racial bias since Moses, who is African American, was dealt with more harshly than white defendants in more egregious voter fraud cases.

Local activist sentenced to six years for illegally registering to vote

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC highlighted Moses’ plight on her show Feb. 4. Maddow showed photographs of four white men who had been caught fraudulently casting ballots in the 2020 presidential election for their dead relatives. Three of the men got probation, and the other got three days in jail.

Whether Moses was in fact treated differently because of her race is an argument for others to make. The latest development in her case is that Ward has now granted her a new trial based on a newly discovered document — first made public by The Guardian — that was not turned over to Moses’ defense lawyer and was not disclosed by the prosecution during her trial.

It is an email written by a Department of Correction administrator that concluded the probation officer who signed the document for Moses — identified as Manager Billington — was negligent in his handling of the matter. There is no mention in the email of the probation officer being tricked.

“When asked why he thought (Moses’) probation had expired even though she was still in unsupervised status, Manager Billington stated that he just assumed that (a court) officer failed to close out case,” the email says.

“Manager Billington advised that he thought he did due diligence in making his decision. Manager Billington was advised that he did not do his due diligence and that the information he used to make determination was not sufficient. Manager Billington failed to adequately investigate the status of this case. He failed to review all of the official documents available through the Shelby County Justice portal and negligently relied on a contact note from a court specialist in 2016.

“While it was tedious to find some of the above mentioned reports… the information that Manager Billington had at the time he signed the Voters Restoration was insufficient to reasonably affirm that an offender was off supervision.”

The email identified the court specialist who had made the notation in Moses’ file. But because the email was not disclosed to the defense, the specialist was not called as a defense witness — testimony that possible could have helped Moses’ case.

Judge orders new trial for local activist

In his order granting a new trial, Ward emphasized that the prosecution’s failure to disclose the email was not intentional. But under the law, the judge wrote, “The prosecution is responsible for knowing what is contained in all state agency files and is held strictly liable for failure to disclose even when it has no knowledge of the existence of information.”

After the judge’s order granting a new trial, Weirich issued a statement, that was more political than legal, in which she put the blame squarely on the Department of Correction.

“The Tennessee Department of Correction failed to turn over a necessary document in the case of Pamela Moses and therefore her conviction has been overturned by a judge. When reporters or political opportunists use the word ‘state’ they need to be crystal clear that the error was made by the TDOC and not any attorney or officer in the office of the Shelby County District Attorney.”

Asked about it later, Weirich defended the statement, saying her political opponents were intentionally misleading the public about Moses’ prosecution. “I wanted to let the men and women in our office know that I am fighting back for them,” she said.

Wierich told me her office will not appeal Ward’s order. But she has not decided whether to retry the case.

My take on the judge’s decision is that investigators and attorneys in Weirich’s office should have discovered the email by asking enough questions and insisting more forcefully on getting every piece of documentation the department had on Moses’ case.

But as I said at the beginning, fixing blame at this point is irrelevant. This is now a political issue more than a legal one. I believe Weirich would be better off — and justice would be served — by her office opting not to retry the case.

Democrats call for unity to defeat incumbent DA

Moses would still be ineligible to vote until later this year, perhaps longer. There is no reason to drag out this murky case any further.

Pressing for a new trial would only give Weirich’s critics, including Democratic candidates seeking to unseat her in August, more ammunition to paint her as a bias prosecutor.

“The Amy I know is not an ideologue,” said Chris Tutor, former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party. “She believes in treating everyone fairly.”

But the Moses case has clearly become a campaign issue for Democrats — not so much because Moses is African American. It’s because they hope to attack Weirich for unfair courtroom tactics and withholding evidence. They also argue that Weirich’s 11 years is enough.

So a local race that already had the makings of an intense battle has gotten more interesting. All because of our polar opposite political views on voting rights. And because Moses refused to take a plea deal for a misdemeanor that would have carried no jail time.

I say let’s continue the debate about voting rights. But let’s not keep Pamela Moses at the center of the argument.