A Colorado appeals court Thursday threw out the nine-year prison sentence for Tina Peters, a former Mesa County clerk convicted on charges related to a scheme to bolster President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The court upheld Peters’s conviction but concluded that the judge improperly sentenced her based in part on her repeated false claims about elections. That wasn’t permissible under her First Amendment right to free speech, the court found, and she must be resentenced based on her conduct alone.

The ruling is a partial victory for Peters, who has been in prison for more than a year and became a cause célèbre among Trump supporters who have embraced his false election claims. Trump has pushed to get Peters out of prison, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) has flirted with commuting her sentence. Polis praised the Thursday decision but didn’t say whether he was still considering granting her clemency.

Writing for a unanimous three-judge appeals panel, Judge Ted C. Tow III said the trial court had imposed a lengthy sentence “because Peters continued to espouse the views that led her to commit these crimes.”

“The tenor of the [trial] 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,’” Tow wrote.

Prosecutors filed 10 charges against Peters in 2022, accusing her of helping to secretly copy Dominion Voting Systems hard...

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