Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years behind bars

CPR covered each day of the Peters' trial. You can read our explainer of the case here, and catch up on individual days here.

Updated on Oct. 3, 2024, at 2:30 p.m.

Tina Peters is headed to prison. 

The former Mesa County Clerk was sentenced to nine years of incarceration, most of which will be served in the Colorado Department of Corrections. 

Peters' attorneys indicated they plan to appeal.

21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett preceded his sentence with a blistering critique of her actions and attitude, calling Peters an attention-seeking former official who only thinks about herself. 

“You are no hero,” Barrett told Peters. “You're a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that's been proven to be junk time and time again.” 

Barrett handed down the sentence in front of a packed courtroom that included supporters of Peters, several uniformed sheriff’s deputies and local elected officials. An overflow crowd gathered just outside the courtroom, streaming the proceedings on their phones from feet away. 

In August, Peters was found guilty by a jury of Mesa County residents on seven counts, including four felonies, after she helped facilitate unauthorized access to county voting equipment that she was supposed to safeguard in search of voter fraud. Her supporters have never shown that the machines were involved in any sort of election manipulation.

During Thursday’s hearing, the prosecution argued that Peters should face the maximum penalty for most, if not all, of the charges. 

“I don’t think anybody in this room would make a straight-faced argument that Mrs. Peters has demonstrated any respect for the law,” 21st Judicial District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said. He noted that she continues to argue she never did anything wrong.

“Ms. Peters has made this community a joke. She's made respecting law enforcement a joke, made respecting court orders a joke. She's not accepted any responsibility and considers this a badge of honor,” said Rubinstein.

Courtesy of Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Ahead of sentencing, Peters asked for probation. She said she recognized the jury’s decision to find her guilty on most of the counts, but that the jury wasn’t allowed to hear other evidence she wanted to present. That evidence was largely tied to conspiracies about the county’s Dominion Voting Machines, which were ruled inadmissible. 

“I'm not a criminal and I don't deserve to go into a prison where other people have committed heinous crimes,” Peters told the judge tearfully. She showed the judge pictures of her deceased husband and her son, a Navy Seal who died in the line of duty. She asked for probation in part to be able to keep visiting her 95-year-old mother in Virginia. 

“I'm remorseful. Yes sir, I really am,” said Peters. “I never expected that just doing an image which was completely legal, before and after the trusted build would've landed me here. I thought it was going to come out quietly.”

But Barrett said his sentence was not just about punishment and the acceptance of responsibility but also deterrence. A stiff sentence, Barrett said, would ensure other elected officials respect the responsibilities of their office. 

“I'm convinced you would do it all over again if you could,” Barrett said. “You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”  

Impact statements present dueling views of Peters

The prosecution and defense were each given an hour to make their case ahead of Barrett’s sentencing decision. 

Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis said the estimated cost of Peters’ actions to Mesa County taxpayers was $1.4 million. That includes Peters's salary while she was barred from the elections office, as well as numerous recounts the county paid for to prove their elections were accurate. 

While Davis explained the efforts to convince the public that Peters’ claims were untrue, Barrett interjected to ask what the hand count and other recounts showed. 

“I want to know, what was the difference?” Barrett asked. 

“They were identical,” Davis said, of the votes,  noting that a hand count as well as a tabulation by a different voting machine company confirmed the election tallies were accurate. “No material difference.” 

“No material difference whatsoever,” Barrett echoed. 

Davis also said Peters’ damage to the county went beyond the budget, to its broader reputation.

"People from across Colorado and other states now associate Mesa County, not with our natural beauty or agriculture, but with the infamous actions of Ms. Peters. Her behavior has made this county a national laughing stock, overshadowing our accomplishments and our values," Davis concluded.

Tom Hesse/CPR News

Former Republican Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis called for Peters to face the consequences of her actions; he referred to her as a disgrace and said all of her allegations of fraudulent votes amount to nothing. 

“They have never produced not one fraudulent vote, your Honor, not one fraudulent vote in Mesa County. Despite all these allegations, despite all these studies,” said McInnis.

Peters’ defense presented character witnesses from her life, one who spoke tearfully about her as a friend and a gold-star mother who lost her son in a military accident.

“She is not a threat to the community, she's not a threat to the state,” said California pastor Dave Bryan, who asked Barrett not to sentence Peters to prison time, but instead to order her to serve probation at his church in California. “She's never been a threat to any other human being and (a prison sentence) could only smack of political vindication.” 

Former Republican Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder also testified in support of Peters; he implored the judge not to incarcerate her for “searching for the truth.” 

“That is tyranny at its worst when people are afraid to be able to stand up and say what they truly believe and to investigate things,” said Shroeder. Schroeder was sued by the state over copies he made of Elbert County’s election machine hard drives around the same time as Peters.

Screenshot from KREX livestream

Barrett questioned Schroeder on why Peters needed to do more than audit and count the ballots.

“You want to evaluate it in a clearer way than actually going back and looking at what the machine told you the results were and then counting the ballots yourself?” Barrett asked. 

Schroeder said it still makes sense for clerks to have the opportunity to see everything that's going on within the elections system. 

The sentence is the culmination of a multi-year investigation and legal fight

Peters was found guilty of three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. She was also convicted of first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with an order from the Secretary of State, all misdemeanors.

The investigation began a little more than three years ago when images taken during a secure update of Mesa County’s voting equipment surfaced online. At the same time, a copy of Mesa County’s hard drive was displayed and discussed at a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has been at the center of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

Over the course of a lengthy trial, prosecutors laid out a timeline demonstrating that Peters had begun meeting with election conspiracy theorists in early 2021 about assumed “irregularities” in voting totals. In response, Peters and others hatched a plan to bring in an unauthorized person to observe a software update of Dominion Voting Machines. The plot involved creating security credentials for a local man named Gerald Wood and using those credentials to help another man gain access to voting equipment. 

That man was retired surfer Conan Hayes, who clandestinely joined the software update and made copies of sensitive information that ended up online. That deceit was what the jury found Peters guilty of. 

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Scott McInnis as a former Mesa County Clerk. He's a former county commissioner who was in office at the time the election security breach came to light.