Maria Dearaujo, an Ohio woman accused of illegally voting as a noncitizen in the 2018 election, was acquitted after a bench trial in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, with the judge ruling that she established entrapment. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Chris Brown issued the verdict Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. The decision meant prosecutors did not secure a conviction that would have carried up to 18 months in prison for Dearaujo, who was 63 at the time of the alleged conduct.
Brown based the ruling on what he said aligned: Dearaujo’s trial testimony matched documentary evidence. In explaining the entrapment defense, Brown focused on how Dearaujo’s path to voter registration and subsequent voting developed during interactions with state agencies, including the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and on what the court said Dearaujo relied on rather than any intent to mislead election officials, the AP reported.
“The defendant testified she never thought about voting or intended to vote until a BMV clerk, a government official, told her to register,” Brown said in court, adding that the court found Dearaujo proved the affirmative entrapment defense by a preponderance of the evidence. Brown also said Dearaujo’s testimony lined up with documentary evidence, the AP reported. The judge said Dearaujo admitted “inconvenient” facts, including that she voted knowing she was not a citizen, but he concluded the elements necessary for entrapment were met.
The verdict undercut Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who had publicly trumpeted the illegal-voting case and others in 2024. The AP reported that Yost’s announcement occurred as he faced political developments including a then-early gubernatorial run and amid an election cycle shaped by immigration-related rhetoric and voter-fraud claims. Yost’s spokesperson, Steve Irwin, told reporters the office was reviewing the ruling, and Governor Mike DeWine later appointed Andy Wilson, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, to serve as attorney general.
Dearaujo appeared to react strongly to the ruling. The Associated Press reported that after the verdict was announced, she clasped her hands in a prayer-like fashion and appeared to cry. She then thanked Brown and her public defender, Jason Inman, saying “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” according to the AP.
The case description in court also addressed how the registration and voting timeline unfolded. Most of the facts were described as uncontested, including that in 2005 Dearaujo registered to vote during a Bureau of Motor Vehicles interaction. She testified she did not mark a citizenship confirmation question on a form at that time, and the AP reported that prosecutors did not call the BMV clerk who handled the transaction to confirm or deny what happened. Dearaujo said she did not vote in subsequent years.
The AP reported that vehicle registration expiration later prompted another trip to the BMV, where Dearaujo testified she was told she could vote. In this later registration-update context, the form she completed included no answer to the written question about citizenship status. A Franklin County Board of Elections official testified that policy at the time directed clerks to review older data from the BMV, which helped explain why the state relied on Dearaujo’s 2005 attestation, the AP reported.
Dearaujo then voted in multiple elections while still a noncitizen. The AP reported that she voted in 2016 and in the 2018 general election, and did so in person at the Heritage Free Will Baptist Church on Columbus’ south side. After an investigation by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office in the fall of 2019, Dearaujo was informed that, as a noncitizen, she had voted illegally in 2018, the AP reported, and she was later told she could either confirm citizenship or cancel the voter registration.
Although she won acquittal, immigration lawyer Mark Nesbit said the legal picture may not be over. In an interview Tuesday reported by the AP, Nesbit said trial evidence showed Dearaujo, in her 2023 citizenship application, stated she had never registered or voted in a U.S. election. Immigration adjudicator John Matz testified about that application record, according to the AP. Nesbit said it can be a crime to make false statements on government forms and that a citizen can be denaturalized for false statements made to become naturalized.
Nesbit told the Associated Press that under prior administrations, denaturalizations were often reserved for the most serious offenders, but that he said the Trump administration has been trying to increase denaturalization efforts. He said that if Dearaujo had been convicted, the administration would likely have tried to denaturalize her, which could then open the door to deportation or removal. He said he was less certain of the outcome after acquittal but believed the Department of Justice could still argue that she misrepresented a material fact on her citizenship application.
The AP also reported background about Dearaujo’s immigration history. She immigrated from Brazil in 1993, married a U.S. citizen in 1997, and later became a lawful permanent resident on Nov. 30, 1999, with that figure appearing in excerpts from her citizenship application shown at trial. The AP reported that after her acquittal, Dearaujo said she currently works in a factory and that she has one adult son, and she told reporters she did not believe she had done anything wrong, adding, “I don’t feel guilty.”
The acquittal came amid a broader enforcement push by Ohio’s attorney general on alleged illegal voting by noncitizens, with the AP reporting mixed results in six related cases Yost brought in 2024. The AP said two cases remain pending in Franklin County, and described other outcomes in counties including Cuyahoga and Summit—such as an indictment involving a person who was reported dead at the time of indictment and another case in which a defendant entered intervention in lieu of conviction to avoid a finding of guilt. The AP also reported that Nicholas Fontaine, a Canadian-born defendant, entered a plea of no contest after motions to dismiss failed, while his lawyer said Fontaine faced potential federal immigration consequences regardless of sentence.
While Dearaujo’s state case ended Tuesday with acquittal, the AP reporting suggested that questions about her earlier citizenship application, and how federal authorities might frame any alleged misrepresentation, could remain a central issue.