Former South Texas Judge Rudy Delgado Gets Prison For Bribery
HOUSTON (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — A former South Texas judge has been sentenced to five years in federal prison after he was convicted of conspiracy, bribery and obstructing justice.
Prosecutors say Rodolfo "Rudy" Delgado, while a state district court judge in Hidalgo County, took bribes for several years in return for favorable rulings. The 66-year-old former judge was sentenced Wednesday in Houston, a little more than two months after a jury found him guilty.
With his conviction, he resigned from the seat on the 13th Texas Court of Appeals to which he'd been elected last November.
Prosecutors say Delgado took more than $5,000 in bribes between January 2008 and November 2016. The U.S. attorney's office for the southern district of Texas said he conspired with an attorney to accept bribes in exchange for favorable judicial consideration on criminal cases in his courtroom.
One of the attorneys started working as an informant for the FBI in 2016, and reportedly would take beer boxes to the judge and slip money into them.
Prosecutors also said that when the judge heard the FBI was investigating him, he told the lawyer to lie about the payments.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)