SPECIAL REPORT| Tina Peters Isn't Just Fighting for Her Freedom — She's Fighting for Yours
Thousands of Americans Stand With Her — and the Questions They're Raising Have Never Been Decided by Any Court
The Fight Is Not Over — It Is Just Beginning
What just happened in the Tina Peters case, what comes next, and why your name matters more than ever
By Terpsehore Maras Lead Amici Curiae, Peters v. Feyen · April 2026
Five years ago, a county clerk in Mesa County, Colorado did something that would upend her life, divide a nation, and ultimately force a federal court to confront some of the most unsettled constitutional questions of our time. Her name is Tina Peters. And on April 2, 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals handed down a ruling that — while not freeing her — confirmed what we, on behalf of 3,057 Americans, argued in our amicus curiae brief: that a judge had violated Tina Peters’ constitutional rights.
We moved the needle. And now we must push harder.
I want to give you a complete picture of what happened, where things stand today, and most importantly — what you can do to make sure your voice continues to be heard in the highest courts in this land.
Who Is Tina Peters and What Did She Do?
Tina Peters served as the elected Clerk and Recorder of Mesa County, Colorado — a Republican stronghold in the western part of the state. In 2021, during a routine software update of the county’s Dominion Voting Systems election equipment, Peters arranged for an unauthorized outside expert — later identified as Conan Hayes, — to gain access to the secured update process under a false identity. Copies of the system were made and subsequently posted online.
Peters maintained she was acting to preserve election records and investigate vulnerabilities she believed existed in Colorado’s voting systems. The state maintained she had committed serious crimes. In August 2024, after a trial that Peters and her legal team have called deeply unfair, a jury convicted her on four felonies and three misdemeanors. In October 2024, Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her to nine years in prison — and remanded her to custody immediately, denying her bail pending appeal.
Here is what Judge Barrett said at her sentencing. Read these words carefully:
“Prison is for those folks where we send people who are a danger to all of us, whether it be by the pen or the sword or the word of the mouth.”“You are a charlatan and you cannot help but lie as easy as it is for you to breathe. That is what makes Ms. Peters such a danger to our community. It’s the position she held that has provided her the pulpit from which she can preach these lies, the undermining of our democratic process, the undermining of the belief and confidence in our election systems.”“So the damage that is caused and continues to be caused is just as bad, if not worse, than the physical violence that this court sees on an all too regular basis.”
The judge did not say Tina Peters was a physical danger. He explicitly equated her words — her political speech — with violence. And on that basis, he sent a 70-year-old non-violent woman with fibromyalgia and a history of lung cancer directly to a medium-security prison in Pueblo, Colorado — without bail, without delay, while her appeal was still pending.
What We Did — And Why It Mattered
When Tina Peters filed a federal habeas corpus petition seeking release on bond pending her state appeal, I — along with attorney Grant Guillot of Grant Guillot LLC — filed an Amicus Curiae brief on behalf of myself and 3,057 American citizens from all 50 states.
Federal Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak accepted our brief, calling it “novel but useful.” That is not a phrase courts use lightly.
Our brief argued four distinct constitutional violations arising from Judge Barrett’s bail denial and sentencing:
Eighth Amendment Barrett’s denial of bail transformed a constitutional safeguard into a punitive weapon. Bail cannot be used as punishment — and Barrett’s own words proved it was. Colorado law permits bail for non-violent defendants pending appeal under C.R.S. § 16-4-201.5. Tina qualified on every criterion. She was denied anyway — because of her speech.
Ninth Amendment The right to speak freely without fear of arbitrary government punishment is among the unenumerated rights retained by the people. By using bail denial to silence Peters’ political expression, the court engaged in impermissible government overreach against fundamental liberties the Framers never intended to leave unprotected.
Fourteenth Amendment Once Colorado created a statutory right to bail pending appeal, due process required it be applied fairly and not arbitrarily. Denying it to punish speech rendered Peters’ appeal effectively meaningless — she could serve most of her sentence before any court reviewed her case. Punishment cannot precede appellate review.
First Amendment Barrett used bail denial as a prior restraint on political speech — removing Peters from public discourse at the precise moment her voice on election integrity was most consequential. The First Amendment protects not only the speaker, but the public’s right to hear dissenting views on matters of grave national concern.
Judge Varholak ultimately dismissed the federal habeas petition in December 2025 — but crucially, he wrote that Peters raised “important Constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech.”
He did not say we were wrong. He said the state courts needed to address it first.
Four months later — they did.
The April 2, 2026 Ruling — What Actually Happened
On April 2, 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals issued a unanimous 78-page ruling in People v. Peters. Here is what it actually said — stripped of spin from both sides:
Conviction — Upheld The court rejected every challenge to the trial itself, finding the proceedings fair and the evidence sufficient to support all seven counts.
Trump Pardon — Rejected The court joined every other appellate court that has addressed the issue, ruling that the president’s power to pardon “offenses against the United States” applies to federal offenses only. The pardon had no legal effect on Tina’s state convictions.
Sentencing — Overturned The nine-year sentence was vacated. The court found Barrett’s sentencing was “based in part on improper consideration of her exercise of her right to free speech” — directly validating the central premise of our amicus brief.
Resentencing — Ordered The case was remanded to Judge Barrett for a new sentencing hearing. Peters’ request for a different judge was denied. Barrett must now resentence without considering her protected speech — but he retains full discretion within that constraint.
How Our Brief Moved the Needle
The Court of Appeals ruling directly echoed the core argument of our amicus brief. We argued that Barrett violated Tina’s constitutional rights by equating her speech with physical danger and using it as the basis for both her sentence and her bail denial.
The appellate court agreed — writing that “the tenor of the court’s comments makes clear that it felt the sentence length was necessary, at least in part, to prevent her from continuing to espouse views the court deemed ‘damaging.’”
That is precisely what 3,057 Americans argued in our brief.
The court heard us. Your names were on that filing. Your voices were in that courtroom. And they registered.
Why This Is Not Over — And Why It Must Go Higher
Here is the uncomfortable truth: sending this case back to Judge Barrett — the same judge whose reasoning was just found constitutionally defective — does not guarantee justice for Tina Peters.
Barrett can resentence her to the same nine years as long as he articulates different reasoning. He could knock a year off. He could give probation. No one knows. What we do know is that the man who called her a charlatan and said her words were as dangerous as violence is being trusted to set that aside and start fresh.
More importantly, the April 2 ruling left several of the most critical constitutional questions completely unanswered. These are questions that have never been decided by the United States Supreme Court — and Tina Peters’ case is the most compelling vehicle in decades to force those answers.
The Three Constitutional Questions SCOTUS Has Never Answered
Question One — The Eighth Amendment Gap
In Schilb v. Kuebel (1971), the Supreme Court assumed the Excessive Bail Clause applies to states — but never actually ruled it. There is no binding precedent. Peters’ case asks: can a state judge deny post-conviction bail explicitly because of protected speech, citing that speech as proof of “danger”? No Supreme Court has answered that. Barrett’s transcript gives us an extraordinary factual record to force the answer.
Question Two — The Fourteenth Amendment Nullity Problem
Colorado enacted a statute — C.R.S. § 16-4-201.5 — specifically permitting bail pending appeal for non-violent defendants who are not flight risks. Tina Peters met every criterion. Once a state creates that right, due process under Griffin v. Illinois and Douglas v. California requires it be applied fairly. Denying it to punish speech rendered her appeal a legal nullity. SCOTUS has never addressed this precise intersection of statutory bail rights and substantive due process.
Question Three — Bail as Prior Restraint
There is no controlling Supreme Court precedent on whether a judge may deny post-conviction bail explicitly because of a defendant’s ongoing political speech. Barrett’s ruling was, in effect, a prior restraint — using incarceration to silence a private citizen’s commentary on matters of public concern. Under Snyder v. Phelps (2011), speech on public issues occupies “the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.” Using a prison sentence to suppress it is constitutionally indefensible — and unaddressed at the highest level.
These are not just strong arguments. They are the kind of unresolved federal constitutional questions SCOTUS Rule 10 was written for.
The Timeline — What Happens Now
The 42-Day Window — Opens April 2, 2026 Peters’ team must decide: accept resentencing before Barrett, or petition the Colorado Supreme Court challenging the conviction itself. If they challenge the conviction, the case goes upward and Barrett loses jurisdiction over resentencing until that process concludes.
Colorado Supreme Court — 4 to 6 Months The court decides whether to accept the case. Colorado’s highest court takes approximately 5% of petitions. If accepted, a ruling could take another 12 to 18 months. Tina remains in prison throughout.
United States Supreme Court — The Ultimate Destination The three constitutional questions identified in our amicus brief are tailor-made for SCOTUS review. A cert petition built around unresolved federal constitutional questions — with a sitting judge’s own transcript as the evidentiary record — is precisely what the Court looks for.
Parole Eligibility — November 2028 Under her current sentence, Tina becomes eligible for parole in November 2028. If the legal process drags without relief, she could serve close to her parole date before any higher court rules. That makes this a race against time.
Why Your Name Holds Real Legal Weight
I want to be direct with you about something that is not often explained to the public: an amicus curiae brief is not a petition. It is not a protest sign. It is a formal legal document filed with a court, accepted into the record, and considered by judges as part of their deliberations.
When Judge Varholak called our brief “novel but useful,” he was saying that the arguments of 3,057 Americans introduced constitutional dimensions that the court found worth considering.
At the Supreme Court level, the presence of a broad amicus coalition — citizens from all 50 states, united around constitutional principle — signals to the Court that a case carries significance beyond the individual petitioner. SCOTUS clerks screen cert petitions and the breadth of public interest matters. Your name on our filing is not symbolic. It is a legal act.
When we file again — at the Colorado Supreme Court, and ultimately at SCOTUS — we intend to bring more names, more voices, and stronger arguments built on the foundation we already laid. The Court of Appeals validated our core premise. Now we push to the finish line.
“Where one citizen’s voice is silenced, all are diminished. The First, Eighth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments protect the liberty of every American. This Republic was never built to endure such judicial overreach.” — Amicus Curiae Brief, Peters v. Feyen, filed September 21, 2025
A Personal Word
I have followed Tina Peters’ case from the beginning. I have watched a 70-year-old woman — a grandmother, a public servant, a person of deep conviction — be placed in a medium-security prison alongside violent offenders because a judge decided her words made her dangerous. I have watched her health deteriorate. I have watched the federal government attempt to intervene and be blocked. I have watched a presidential pardon be issued and dismissed. And through all of it, Tina Peters has not recanted. She has not apologized for asking questions about the integrity of our elections.
You may agree or disagree with her conclusions about 2020. That is your right as an American. But the question before the courts — and before us — is not whether she was right. It is whether a judge in this country can use a prison sentence to silence a citizen for what she believes and says.
That question matters regardless of your politics. It matters because the precedent it sets does not stay confined to one person or one side of the aisle. It travels. And if we allow it to stand, it will be used again.
We have already moved the needle. The Colorado Court of Appeals agreed with us. Now we go higher. And we go together.
Afterthought: On Remedies, Speed, and Why This Case Will Outlast All of Us
There are several mechanisms available to accelerate justice for Tina Peters, and it is worth being honest about what each one does and does not accomplish. The fastest path to Tina Peters walking free is not a courtroom — it is Governor Jared Polis. He has already called her nine-year sentence "an obvious outlier." The Court of Appeals just handed him the political cover he needs by confirming on the record that her constitutional rights were violated. A clemency order or commutation requires no court, no filing deadline, and no 42-day window. It requires only the political will to act. If freedom for Tina Peters is the immediate goal, the pressure on Polis is the most direct lever available and it can be pulled today.
But — and this is the part that matters beyond Tina — clemency changes nothing for the rest of us. It frees one woman and leaves every unconstitutional precedent Barrett set fully intact, free to be used against the next person who speaks too loudly about something a judge finds inconvenient. That is where the courts come in, and that is where this case transcends Tina Peters entirely. The path through the Colorado Supreme Court and ultimately to the United States Supreme Court is slower — we are talking months to years — but it is the path that carries the highest legal efficacy because it forces answers to constitutional questions that have gone unresolved for decades.
CAN SHE GET BAIL WHILE PETITIONING THE COLORADO SUPREME COURT?
Yes — and this is the strongest bail argument Tina Peters has ever had. When her team files their petition with the Colorado Supreme Court, they can simultaneously file a Motion for Bail Pending Certiorari Review — and the legal landscape has fundamentally shifted in their favor. Every prior bail motion was filed while the Court of Appeals had not yet ruled. Now the Court of Appeals has confirmed on the record that Barrett's reasoning was constitutionally defective. That is new ammunition that did not exist for any previous motion.
The argument is direct and compelling: Colorado law under C.R.S. § 16-4-201.5 expressly permits bail for non-violent defendants pending appeal. Tina Peters meets every statutory criterion — she is not a flight risk, she is not a physical danger to the community, and she is no longer in public office with any capacity to repeat the conduct that led to her conviction. The Court of Appeals itself noted that fact. Continued incarceration while the Colorado Supreme Court takes four to six months just to decide whether to hear the case — and potentially another twelve to eighteen months to rule — compounds a confirmed constitutional injury every single day. That argument, grounded in the appellate court's own findings, is materially stronger than anything previously put before a court on bail.
WHAT ABOUT BAIL AT THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT?
This is a powerful but rarely invoked mechanism — and it is available. Under Supreme Court Rule 36, a party can apply directly to a single Justice for release pending Supreme Court review of a state court judgment. Peters' team would apply to the Circuit Justice assigned to the Tenth Circuit, which covers Colorado. That Justice is Justice Neil Gorsuch. A single Justice can grant bail pending SCOTUS review without a full Court vote, applying a two-part standard: whether there are substantial questions presented for review, and whether the balance of hardships favors release.
Both elements are present here in an unusually compelling way. On the first prong — the three unresolved constitutional questions identified in our amicus brief are by definition substantial: the Eighth Amendment incorporation gap, the Fourteenth Amendment statutory bail nullity problem, and the question of bail as prior restraint on political speech. No controlling Supreme Court precedent governs any of them. On the second prong — a 70-year-old woman with fibromyalgia and a history of lung cancer, whose health has visibly deteriorated during incarceration, whose sentence was already found constitutionally defective, and who faces potentially years more imprisonment while unresolved federal questions wind through the courts — that balance tips sharply toward release.
Why Gorsuch matters here specifically: he has one of the strongest First Amendment records on the current Court and wrote the majority in Counterman v. Colorado (2023) — a First Amendment case that came directly out of Colorado — limiting the state's ability to criminalize speech. A Colorado judge explicitly punishing protected speech in his own words, on the record, is precisely the kind of fact pattern that could command Gorsuch's personal attention. This is not a random long shot. It is a calculated application to the one Justice most likely to view Barrett's transcript the way we do.
The strategic sequence that gives Tina the best chance of both freedom and lasting legal change is this: file the bail motion at the Colorado Supreme Court simultaneously with the cert petition — forcing the state to defend continued incarceration based on a confirmed constitutional violation. If denied, immediately escalate to a Rule 36 application to Justice Gorsuch, citing the Colorado Supreme Court's refusal to remedy what the Court of Appeals already found. That two-step creates an exhaustion record that strengthens the SCOTUS application and places the constitutional question squarely before the one Justice most equipped — and most inclined — to act on it.
WHY THIS CHANGES THE LAW FOR ALL OF US
The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled whether the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Bail Clause fully applies to the states in post-conviction contexts. It has never addressed whether a judge may use incarceration as a prior restraint on a private citizen's political speech. It has never resolved the precise intersection of a state-created statutory bail right and the substantive due process protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. These are not narrow technical questions. They are foundational — and the answers will govern every courtroom in America long after Tina Peters' case is closed.
That is what jurisprudential change looks like. It does not announce itself with fanfare. It arrives in the form of a 70-year-old woman from Mesa County, Colorado, whose judge put his unconstitutional reasoning on the record in his own words, handing every future court a transcript they cannot ignore. If we do our job — if we build the coalition, file the briefs, and carry these arguments to SCOTUS — Tina Peters will not just have fought for her freedom. She will have fought for a legal framework that protects yours.
Join Us. Fight With Us.
Your name is a legal instrument. Your support makes the next filing possible.
Contribute if you can to the legal costs of taking this to Colorado Supreme Court and even SCOTUS:
Every name added to our amicus coalition strengthens the signal to the Supreme Court that this case carries constitutional significance beyond one individual. Every dollar contributed funds the legal work required to bring these arguments to the highest court in the land. Neither is symbolic. Both are necessary.
Terpsehore Maras is the lead amici curiae in Peters v. Feyen, Civil Action No. 1:25-cv-00425 (D. Colo.), where she filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of herself and 3,057 American citizens in support of Tina Peters’ habeas corpus petition. The brief was accepted by the United States District Court for the District of Colorado and deemed “novel but useful” by Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak. This article reflects my personal views and legal analysis and does not constitute legal advice.
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