Imprisoned former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters was found not guilty of assault on a fellow inmate following a confrontation at the La Vista Correctional Facility in January, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.
The New York Post reports that the hearing, overseen by the Department of Corrections itself, examined surveillance footage that showed Peters navigating a large black cart through a doorway of the facility. During the encounter, Peters appears to wrap her hands around the fellow inmate's neck. Prison officials said neither woman was injured.
Despite the not guilty finding on the assault allegation, prison officials found Peters guilty of a Class II Rule violation for "unauthorized absence." The details of that violation remain unexplained beyond the label.
Peters, the former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, is serving a nine-year sentence for taking part in efforts to invalidate the 2020 election of former President Joe Biden. President Trump issued Peters a "full pardon" in December, but she remains behind bars because her crimes were committed at the state level.
That distinction matters. A presidential pardon carries no weight against a state conviction. The only person who can free Tina Peters is Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who holds the sole authority to pardon her at the state level.
He has shown no indication of doing so. State officials on both sides of the aisle have urged Polis to uphold her sentence.
What the cleared assault charge reveals is less about the confrontation itself and more about the circumstances surrounding Peters. A woman who served as a county clerk sits in a state prison on a nine-year sentence. The footage captured a brief physical encounter in which no one was injured. A corrections department hearing reviewed the evidence and found her not guilty of the more serious charge.
That outcome will barely register in most newsrooms, which spent considerable energy covering the accusation. The acquittal will receive a fraction of the attention. That pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched how media covers figures aligned with Trump: the charge is the headline, the exoneration is the footnote.
The broader question surrounding Peters has nothing to do with a prison scuffle. It has everything to do with proportionality. A nine-year sentence for a county clerk who challenged election procedures sits in stark contrast to the treatment of officials in other states who bent or ignored election rules in 2020 with no consequences at all. The difference, of course, is which direction the rule-bending went.
President Trump recognized the disparity and acted within his authority. But the architecture of American federalism means his pardon stops at the state line. Colorado controls her fate now, and Colorado's political class has made its position clear.
Polis could exercise clemency. He could review the sentence in light of its severity relative to the underlying conduct. He has chosen not to. And the bipartisan coalition urging him to hold firm ensures he faces no political cost for inaction.
Tina Peters was cleared of assault. She remains locked up for nine years. The system worked exactly as one side wanted it to.
