By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – A South Texas lawmaker accused of using his elected position to sell legislative favors has been convicted today of multiple counts of tampering with government records and perjury.
A jury in Austin convicted 52-year-old state Rep. Kino Flores, who did not testify.
Flores faces up to two years behind bars. He'll be sentenced Nov. 22 by State District Judge Bob Perkins.
Flores and his lawyers left court today without commenting.
The Austin American-Statesman reports Flores was convicted over omissions he made on financial disclosure forms required to be filed by state elected officials.
The Democrat, who's served in the Legislature since 1996, is not seeking re-election. He represents District 36, a border district including Mission, McAllen and Pharr.
Travis County District Attorney Gregg Cox said Flores was selling legislative influence.
Hearing rescheduled for Rangers-fan lawyer
Dallas lawyer Darrell Cook made a compelling legal argument for why he couldn't attend a pretrial hearing in court.
He's a Texas Rangers fan with tickets to Game 1 of the World Series in San Francisco between the Rangers and the Giants.
Cook filed an emergency motion in municipal court in Irving for a postponement of the scheduled Wednesday hearing. It was approved with the prosecutor's consent.
His motion says he must "attend to very important baseball matters and really, really needs to not be obligated to attend the hearing."
Cook says the postponement would ensure that "justice may be done." A footnote explains that justice would be Rangers' ace pitcher Cliff Lee mowing down the Giants' lineup.
Cook is representing an apartment complex accused of violating an ordinance concerning crime reduction.
15 people killed in Mexican car wash massacre
Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash today in a Mexican Pacific coast state where drug-gang violence has risen this year.
Officials say the gunmen in three vehicles drove up to the car wash in the city of Tepic and opened fire without provocation. Fifteen men were killed and three people were injured.
The motive was not immediately clear but investigators suspect it was the work of organized crime.
In Ciudad Juarez, authorities say gunmen killed three undercover Mexican federal police officers as they waited for a person to cross a bridge from El Paso, Texas.
The Chihuahua state attorney general's office gave no further details of yesterday's shooting, but motorists crossing the Cordova Americas International Bridge were told by officials that there was a delay because of a shooting.
In an unrelated attack, a Chihuahua state police officer was killed today in his Ciudad Juarez home.