Man Sentenced to Prison for Hillary Clinton Meme Has Conviction Overturned in Court of Appeals

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Douglass Mackey, the social media influencer who was sentenced to seven months in prison in 2023 for posting an anti-Hillary Clinton meme, had his conviction overturned in the Court of Appeals on Wednesday.

Mackey, who posted political commentary under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” was found guilty of taking part in a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote” and sentenced to seven months in prison after he posted a satirical meme in 2016 which suggested Clinton supporters could “Avoid the Line” and “Vote from Home” by texting “Hillary” to a listed phone number.

Mackey’s conviction was celebrated by appointees of former President Joe Biden, who called it a “groundbreaking prosecution.”

However, on Wednesday, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit voted unanimously to reverse Mackey’s conviction.

“On appeal, Mackey argues, inter alia, that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he knowingly agreed to join the charged conspiracy. We agree,” ruled the court. “Accordingly, we REVERSE Mackey’s conviction and REMAND the case to the district court with instructions to enter a judgment of acquittal.”

In its decision, the court stated that:

…the mere fact that Mackey posted the memes, even assuming that he did so with the intent to injure other citizens in the exercise of their right to vote, is not enough, standing alone, to prove a violation of Section 241. The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective. See United States v. Scott, 979 F.3d 986, 990 (2d Cir. 2020).

This the government failed to do. Its primary evidence of agreement, apart from the memes themselves, consisted of exchanges among the participants in several private Twitter message groups—exchanges the government argued showed the intent of the participants to interfere with others’ exercise of their right to vote. Yet the government failed to offer sufficient evidence that Mackey even viewed—let alone participated in—any of these exchanges. And in the absence of such evidence, the government’s remaining circumstantial evidence cannot alone establish Mackey’s knowing agreement. Accordingly, the jury’s verdict and the resulting judgment of conviction must be set aside.

Mackey celebrated the “UNANIMOUS DECISION by both Republican and Democrat judges” on social media, writing, “HALLELUJAH! Praise God. God is good. Now we sue.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) also celebrated the “HUGE free speech win.”

“This was clearly a political prosecution—one of many example of the Biden DOJ weaponizing the criminal justice system,” wrote Schmitt. “These people need to answer for what they did. The DOJ should investigate who in the Department was responsible for bringing and prosecuting this case and take whatever action is necessary to ensure a miscarriage of justice like this does not happen again.”