Pinkney’s convictions affirmed for buying Benton Harbor votes
Published 8:43 pm Thursday, July 16, 2009
By Staff
ST. JOSEPH – In an opinion published July 14, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions of Edward Pinkney for giving valuable consideration to influence the manner of voting by a person, influencing a person voting an absent voter ballot and three counts of possessing, returning or soliciting to return an absent voter ballot, according to the Berrien County Prosecutor's Office.
The Court of Appeals reversed an order revoking Pinkney's probation based on an editorial Pinkney wrote criticizing Judge Alfred Butzbaugh, who presided over his trial.
Pinkney's convictions arose from the Feb. 22, 2005, election that recalled Benton Harbor City Commissioner Glen Yarbrough.
According to testimony at Pinkney's trial, Pinkney asked Brenda Fox to recruit people from the local soup kitchen to vote absentee ballots in the election, telling Fox he would pay each of them $5.
The day before the election, Fox recruited 15 people from the soup kitchen and took them to the city clerk's office, where she instructed them to vote "yes."
Fox then led the recruits to Pinkney, who paid them.
Other evidence was presented that Pinkney had possessed the absentee ballots of at least 10 other people and that he had told some of these people to vote "yes."
The Court of Appeals rejected numerous arguments by Pinkney.
These included claims that his right to a public trial was violated by a malfunction in the video transmission by which the public viewed the jury selection; he should not have been convicted by possession absentee ballot without proof that he knew it was a crime; and that he was denied the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.
Pinkney was sentenced to five years probation with a one-year delayed jail sentence.
One of the conditions of probation was that he not engage in defamatory or demeaning activity.
The trial court found that Pinkney's publication of the criticism of Judge Butzbaugh violated this condition, revoked his probation and sentenced him to three to 10 years imprisonment.
The Court of Appeals held that the probation condition was improper because it violated Pinkney's First Amendment right to free speech without being narrowly tailored to his rehabilitation of the crimes he committed.
Pinkney can ask the Michigan Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals decision affirming his conviction, but the Supreme Court is not required to do so.