BOSTON – Convicted former Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia will stay behind bars.
Correia, who became the youngest mayor in city history before being jailed for six years in federal prison for corruption and fraud, has lost his appeal before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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In an 82-page decision written by First Circuit Judge Bruce Selya released Tuesday, Correia’s argument that the prosecution made improper statements during trial, the government failed to present adequate evidence for some of the counts and other grounds was rejected.
“The record reveals that the defendant was fairly tried and lawfully convicted by an impartial jury in a trial presided over by an able judge and unblemished by any reversible error. For the reasons elucidated above, the judgment of the district court is affirmed,” Selya wrote.
Lawyers for Correia declined to comment on Tuesday. In their appeal, they accused prosecutors of carrying out an “unfair smear campaign in the courtroom” and called the evidence against their client “remarkably shallow.” The former mayor maintains he is innocent.
In May 2021, Correia was convicted of 21 counts for defrauding investors in a smartphone app he was developing and for extorting money from marijuana companies seeking to do business in Fall River. But a judge ultimately dismissed 10 fraud and tax evasion charges, leaving 11 convictions to stand.
Correia’s trial traced his meteoric rise to become mayor as a recent college graduate. Correia portrayed himself to voters as a successful entrepreneur who could breathe new life into the town.
After becoming mayor in 2016 at the age of 23, prosecutors said Correia started a pay-to-play scheme involving bribes from marijuana vendors in exchange for letters of approval from the city they needed in order to get a license.
Correia’s lawyers challenged, among other things, prosecutors’ use of a video clip from a 2015 mayor’s race debate in which Correia promised taxpayers that he would take their money and “spend it wisely” — as he said he had done in his business.
Judge Selya wrote in the three-judge panel’s opinion that “even though the challenged comments may have suggested that the voters of Fall River had been duped, nothing in the record suggests that invoking the plight of those voters would have clouded the jury’s ability to weigh the evidence fairly.”
He reported to prison in Berlin, N.H., in April and appealed his conviction in September.
(Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.)
