A federal appeals court on July 9 overturned the conviction of a man who was found guilty of conspiring to interfere with citizens’ right to vote by posting a meme online.
The evidence against Douglass Mackey is insufficient to prove he knowingly conspired to interfere with the right to vote, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said.
The statute in question prohibits conspiracies between two or more persons.
“The mere fact that Mackey posted the memes, even assuming that he did so with the intent to injure other citizens in the exercise of their right to vote, is not enough, standing alone, to prove a violation of Section 241. The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective. This the government failed to do,” Circuit Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote for the unanimous panel….