Former mayor Jasiel Corriea elected at 23 loses his attraction in opposition to corruption conviction that concerned taking bribes from marijuana companies

In a ruling printed on Monday, the first U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals rejected a sequence of challenges to former Fall River Mayor Jasiel Corriea’s 2021 trial, concluding that the 30-year-old was “pretty tried and lawfully convicted by an neutral jury.”

Correia, as soon as a rising Democratic star after being elected at simply 23 years previous, was discovered responsible by jurors in Boston federal court docket of defrauding buyers in his smartphone app and soliciting bribes from marijuana distributors who wished to function within the struggling mill metropolis.

The decide later tossed a number of wire fraud and false tax returns convictions that he mentioned prosecutors did not show. Corriea stays convicted of a number of counts of fraud, extortion conspiracy and extortion. He reported to jail in April to start serving his six-year jail sentence.

Attorneys for Correia declined to touch upon Tuesday. Of their attraction, they accused prosecutors of finishing up an “unfair smear marketing campaign within the courtroom” and referred to as the proof in opposition to their shopper “remarkably shallow.” The previous mayor maintains he’s harmless.

Correia’s trial shone a light-weight on his meteoric rise to change into mayor as a current school graduate. Correia portrayed himself to voters as a profitable entrepreneur who might breathe new life into the city.

Prosecutors informed jurors that in actuality Corriea funded his lavish way of life with cash he stole from buyers who pumped money into his startup, “SnoOwl,” an app designed to assist companies join with shoppers.

After changing into mayor in 2016, prosecutors mentioned Correia began a pay-to-play scheme involving bribes from marijuana distributors in alternate for letters of approval from the town they wanted with a purpose to get a license.

Correia’s attorneys challenged, amongst different issues, prosecutors’ use of a video clip from a 2015 mayor’s race debate during which Correia promised taxpayers that he would take their cash and and “spend it correctly” — as he mentioned he had finished in his enterprise.

Decide Bruce Selya wrote within the three-judge panel’s opinion that “regardless that the challenged feedback could have recommended that the voters of Fall River had been duped, nothing within the file means that invoking the plight of these voters would have clouded the jury’s means to weigh the proof pretty.”