DENVER — A Colorado appeals court Thursday overturned the prison sentence of Tina Peters, the most prominent election denier still behind bars for crimes stemming from the 2020 election. But the court did not immediately free Peters from prison or overturn her underlying conviction.

In a 3-0 ruling, the appeals court panel threw out the nine-year sentence handed down in 2024 to Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, and ordered that her case be sent back to the trial court in the county for resentencing. A jury in her conservative western Colorado hometown had convicted her of tampering with voting machines that were under her control.

President Donald Trump has been demanding her release for months in a pressure campaign aimed at Colorado and its Democratic governor, Jared Polis.

The judges found that the trial judge who sentenced Peters had violated her free-speech rights by criticizing her as a “charlatan” and a snake-oil saleswoman who peddled false claims that the 2020 election had been rigged against Trump.

“The trial court’s comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing,” the judges wrote. “Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”

But the judges also rejected Trump’s attempt to issue a presidential pardon for Peters, noting that “the President’s pardon does not reach Peters’s state offenses.”

“We are unaware of — and can find no historical record of — any instance of a president pardoning someone for a state offense,” the judges wrote.

The ruling Thursday is likely to intensify the legal battle swirling around Peters, 70.

With Peters in prison, the Trump administration has battered Colorado, cutting federal money to the state, moving to close a leading science center and relocating the headquarters of U.S. Space Command. Polis has suggested he is edging closer to granting clemency to Peters, a politically perilous decision for the governor in a solidly Democratic state.

Polis has spent months talking to friends and political allies in private about her case. In public, he has dropped a series of increasingly concrete hints that he might commute her sentence, calling it “harsh” and noting her advanced age. In March, Polis compared Peters’ sentence to that of a Democratic former state senator, Sonya Jaquez Lewis, who was convicted of similar charges but given a far lighter sentence.

Peter Ticktin, a lawyer representing Peters, said they planned to appeal the decision, possibly directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Attorney General Phil Weiser of Colorado, whose office helped prosecute Peters, said in a statement that he thought her original sentence was fair but did not suggest he would challenge the court’s ruling.

“Whatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk and threatened our democracy,” said Weiser, a Democrat who is running for governor. “Nothing will remove that stain.”

Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, added her appreciation that the conviction had been affirmed and that Peters would “continue to face accountability for coordinating a breach of her own election equipment.” She added that Peters “should not receive any special treatment as the District Court considers resentencing.”

Aides in Polis’ office told Colorado lawmakers that the governor would not act on Peters’ sentence until the Court of Appeals handed down its ruling. A spokesperson for the governor did not immediately respond to a message about the governor’s plans, now that the court has decided her case.

Polis, who will leave office early next year because of term limits, has occasionally bucked Democrats. He has offered praise to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president’s health secretary.

His willingness to consider commuting Peters’ sentence has drawn strident opposition from nearly every elected Democrat in the state and some moderate Republicans. They have questioned why their governor would speed up the release of a Trump supporter who helped fuel false claims of election fraud after the 2020 election.

But the Trump administration has offered its own reasons for Polis to act. Over the past few months, the administration has cut off transportation money earmarked for the state; relocated U.S. Space Command to Alabama from Colorado; vowed to dismantle a leading climate and weather research center in Boulder; and rejected disaster relief for rural counties in the state hammered by floods and wildfires.

The first veto of Trump’s second term killed a pipeline project to provide drinking water to the state’s eastern plains.

The president has not cited Peters’ case as a reason for any of these actions, but his calls for her release have been angry.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jack Healy and Nick Corasaniti/Natalie Behring
c. 2026 The New York Times Company