Convictions Stand for Pair Who Bribed Texas City Officials

Two men found guilty in 2022 of bribing city commissioners in Weslaco, Texas, in order to secure lucrative infrastructure development contracts for certain engineering firms lost appeals to undo their convictions on Friday.

Each argument they raised in their consolidated brief was either forfeited, lacked merit, or both, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said, affirming their convictions and sentences.

An appellant’s brief must include “a statement of the issues presented for review,” but many of Arturo Cuellar and Ricardo Quintanilla’s nine expressly appealed issues contained passages that would typically be issues appealed in their own right, ...