Alaska prosecutors dropped voter-misconduct cases against a group of residents born in American Samoa after a state appeals court last week overturned felony charges against a woman who had checked a box saying she was a U.S. citizen.
The state’s Department of Law announced the decision Friday, saying the three-judge Court of Appeals panel had ruled that Alaska law requires proof that defendants who mistakenly filled out voter registration forms had a “consciousness of wrongdoing” and intended to break the law.
The panel found problems with a state trooper’s questioning of Tupe Smith—the woman whose case was thrown out—as well as with the grand jury process that produced her indictment, and it overturned a lower court’s decision that had kept charges against her alive.
Acting Alaska Attorney General Cori Mills said in a statement that after reviewing the ruling and applying it to the facts, prosecutors concluded they could not prove cases against Smith and the others beyond a reasonable doubt. Her husband, Michael Pese, had also been charged.
“We respect the role of the courts in interpreting Alaska law and will faithfully execute our duty to apply the law and carefully evaluate our prosecutorial decisions,” Mills said.
In all, 11 people from the small community of Whittier, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Anchorage, had been charged with falsely claiming U.S. citizenship either when registering or when attempting to vote.
American Samoa is the only U.S. territory where people born on American soil are not automatically granted U.S. citizenship; instead they are considered U.S. nationals. Paths to citizenship exist, such as naturalization, though that process can be expensive and cumbersome.
American Samoans can serve in the military, obtain U.S. passports and vote in elections in American Samoa, but they cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections.
Smith’s lawyer, Whitney Brown, said the dismissal would allow the community “to put this ordeal behind them and begin moving forward.”
Earlier she praised the Court of Appeals decision, saying it “establishes an important safeguard against imposing felony liability for an honest mistake.”
Brown added that the court “made clear that Alaska law requires more than simply showing that a statement was false — the State must prove a person acted with a consciousness of wrongdoing. That distinction makes a world of difference to Ms. Smith and helps ensure that Alaska’s voter-misconduct statute is applied as the legislature intended going forward.”
Smith was arrested after winning election to a regional school board in 2023. She has said she relied on erroneous information from election officials in Whittier when she identified herself as a U.S. citizen on voter registration forms.
According to court papers, Smith marks herself as a U.S. national on other paperwork, but when there was no such option on voter registration forms she was told by city representatives that it was appropriate to mark herself as a citizen.
Prosecutors argued that Smith deliberately claimed citizenship, pointing to warnings on voter registration forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022 that noncitizens “are not eligible to vote.”
The Court of Appeals panel said that near the end of a police interview a state trooper posed “a long compound question that implied that Smith actually knew she was not eligible to vote” but wanted to be involved in the school board. When Smith—whose native language is not English—did not respond immediately, another trooper clarified, “He’s asking you,” and the first trooper repeated a lengthy, complex statement containing four individual questions. Smith answered “Yes,” the panel said, and was later arrested and indicted on two counts of felony voter misconduct.
Neil Weare, part of the legal team representing Smith and Pese, said the decision to drop charges “raises questions about why this prosecution was even brought to begin with.”
“It’s clear that all along, they really had no evidence of any consciousness of wrongdoing on the part of Michael, Tupe or the other defendants,” said Weare, co-director of the nonprofit Right to Democracy.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
Source: fortune.com
