ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A failed political candidate was sentenced to 80 years in federal prison Wednesday for his convictions in a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of state and local lawmakers in Albuquerque in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

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A jury convicted former Republican candidate Solomon Peña earlier this year of conspiracy, weapons and other charges in the shootings in December 2022 and January 2023 on the homes of four Democratic officials, including the current state House speaker.

Prosecutors, who had sought a 90-year sentence, said Peña has shown no remorse and had hoped to cause political change by terrorizing people who held contrary views to him into being too afraid to take part in political life.

Peña’s lawyers had sought a five-year sentence, saying their client maintains that he is innocent of the charges. They have said Peña was not involved in the shootings and that prosecutors were relying on the testimony of two men who bear responsibility and accepted plea agreements in exchange for leniency.

“Today was a necessary step toward Mr. Peña’s continued fight to prove his innocence,” said Nicholas Hart, one of Peña’s attorneys. “He looks forward to the opportunity to appeal, where serious issues about the propriety of this prosecution will be addressed.”

The attacks took place as threats and acts of intimidation against election workers and public officials surged across the country after President Donald Trump and his allies called into question the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Prosecutors said Peña resorted to violence in the belief that a “rigged” election had robbed him of victory in his bid to serve in the state Legislature.

The shootings targeted the homes of officials including two county commissioners after their certification of the 2022 election, in which Peña lost by nearly 50 percentage points. No one was injured, but in one case bullets passed through the bedroom of a state senator’s 10-year-old daughter.

Two other men who had acknowledged helping Peña with the attacks had previously pleaded guilty to federal charges and received yearslong prison sentences.

By JUAN A. LOZANO

HOUSTON (AP) — Nine people, including a former mayor and city council member and the chief of staff to a state representative, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to felony charges brought forth in a rural Texas county by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton as part of a widening elections investigation that is being criticized by Latino rights activists as being politically driven.

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The nine people appeared either in person or by Zoom during a court hearing in Pearsall, Texas, before state District Judge Sid Harle.

All of the nine people, who were indicted in late June, have been charged with what is known in Texas as vote harvesting, a felony that often involves payment for collecting and dropping off other people’s absentee ballots.

In May, six other people, including Frio County Judge Rochelle Camacho, the top elected official in the county, were indicted as part of Paxton’s investigation.

One of the individuals who pleaded not guilty on Wednesday was Juan Manuel Medina, who is the chief of staff for state Rep. Elizabeth Campos. Medina is also former chairman of the Democratic Party of Bexar County, where San Antonio is located.

Medina’s lawyer, Gerry Goldstein, declined to comment on Wednesday. “I’m going to do my talking in the courtroom,” Goldstein said.

On Wednesday, Goldstein filed a motion to dismiss the indictment against Medina, who is accused of providing compensation as a third party to two people for vote harvesting in February 2024.

In the motion to dismiss, Goldstein said the vote-harvesting statute is overbroad, vague and “restricts Constitutionally protected rights to speech and to participate in the election and voting process in violation of the First Amendment.”

Goldstein said in the motion that the vote-harvesting statute “would appear to punish a broad range of protected speech, including non-coercive voter assistance and core political expression, without requiring any actual voter fraud, coercion, or intimidation.”

“This indictment charges Medina in a capacity that is not a crime and the indictment should be dismissed,” Goldstein said in his 20-page motion.

The vote-harvesting charges are third-degree felonies and carry up to 10 years in prison. The other people who were indicted in June are: Cecilia Castellano, a former candidate for state representative; Frio County Commissioner Raul Carrizales; former Dilley Mayor Mary Ann Obregon; former Dilley City Council member Inelda Rodriguez; Petra Davina Trevino, a former candidate for Pearsall city council; Pearsall school district trustee Mari Benavides; Susanna Carrizales; and Rachel Leal.

Attorneys for Raul Carrizales, Susanna Carrizales, Castellano, Obregon and Rodriguez did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Attorneys for Benavides, Leal and Trevino could not immediately be reached for comment.

Paxton’s office and 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Gossett Louis, whose office presented the case to a grand jury with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, did not return a call or email seeking comment.

Last month, Paxton said that any elected official “trying to cheat the system will have to answer for it.”

“Under my watch, attempts to rig elections and silence the will of the voters will be met with the full force of the law. I will continue to fight to ensure Texas has free and fair elections,” Paxton said in a statement.

The indictments were the latest development in an investigation that Paxton started after the 2020 election to root out voter fraud, which is rare and typically occurs in isolated instances. Texas has tightened its voter laws in recent years and increased penalties that Democrats and opponents say are attempts to suppress turnout among Black and Latino voters.

A federal appeals court last year upheld the state’s law that tightened voter restrictions and increased penalties for vote harvesting.

Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s attorney general on Wednesday sued the parent company of the Zelle payment platform, months after the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau abandoned a similar case as the Trump administration was gutting the agency.

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Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, sued Early Warning Services in New York state court, alleging that the company, which is owned by a group of U.S. banks, had failed to protect users from fraud by not including critical safety features in Zelle’s design.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this year dropped a similar case after President Donald Trump fired the agency’s leader and his administration halted nearly all the bureau’s work, closed its headquarters and moved to fire many of its workers.

In a statement, James’ office noted that its suit was filed after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau abandoned its lawsuit following a “change in the federal administration.”

“No one should be left to fend for themselves after falling victim to a scam,” James said in a statement. “I look forward to getting justice for the New Yorkers who suffered because of Zelle’s security failures.”

James has been a leading antagonist of Trump, a Republican, and has sued him dozens of times. Last week, The Associated Press and other news outlets reported that the Justice Department has subpoenaed James as part of an investigation into whether she violated Trump’s civil rights, according to people familiar with the matter.

James’ case against Early Warning Services alleged that Zelle, which allows users to send and receive near-instant money transfers, failed to include adequate verification processes. Her office said scammers were able to access peoples’ accounts or trick users into sending money to bogus accounts that posed as official businesses.

In one instance cited by the attorney general’s office, a Zelle user got a call from someone posing as an employee of the utility company Con Edison who told the user that his electricity was going to be shut off unless he sent them money through Zelle. The user then transferred about $1,500 to a Zelle account named “Coned Billing” and then realized he had been scammed but was told by his bank that he could not get his money back, James’ office said.

In a statement issued through a spokesperson, Zelle called James’ lawsuit “a political stunt to generate press, not progress.”

“The Attorney General should focus on the hard facts, stopping criminal activity and adherence to the law, not overreach and meritless claims,” the statement said.

By DAVID CRARY

The leader of the small Baha’i community in Qatar was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for social media posts that allegedly “cast doubt on the foundations of the Islamic religion,” according to court documents obtained by an international Baha’i organization monitoring the case.

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A three-judge panel of Qatar’s Supreme Judiciary Council issued the verdict against Remy Rowhani, 71, who has been detained since April, according to documents provided to The Associated Press by the Baha’i International Community office in Geneva, Switzerland.

The judges rejected a defense request for leniency on grounds that Rowhani suffered from a heart condition, according to the documentation.

Saba Haddad, the Geneva office’s representative to the United Nations, depicted the verdict as “a serious breach and grave violation of the right to freedom of religion or belief and an attack on Remy Rowhani and the Baha’i community in Qatar.”

Haddad’s office, in a post on X, called on the international community “to urge Qatar’s government to uphold international law and ensure Mr. Rowhani’s immediate release.”

There was no immediate response from Qatar’s International Media Office to AP’s queries about the case.

The verdict came just two weeks after a group of U.N. human rights experts expressed “serious concern” about Rowhani’s arrest and detention, which they depicted as “part of a broader and disturbing pattern of disparate treatment of the Baha’i minority in Qatar.”

“The mere existence of Baha’is in Qatar and their innocuous presence on X cannot be criminalized under international law,” they said.

Rowhani — former head of Qatar’s Chamber of Commerce — had been arrested once previously, accused of offenses such as routine fundraising related to his leadership of Qatar’s Baha’i National Assembly.

The latest charges, filed in April, involve the Baha’i community’s X and Instagram accounts, which contain posts about Qatari holidays and Baha’i writings.

According to the documentation provided by the Geneva office, Qatari prosecutors alleged that these accounts “promoted the ideas and beliefs of a religious sect that raises doubt about the foundations and teachings of the Islamic religion.”

Rowhani’s daughter, Noora Rowhani, who lives in Australia, said via email that the five-year verdict is “so unfortunate and so shocking.”

“My eye condition is deteriorating and in five years, even if I meet, him I will most probably not be able to see him anymore,” she added.

The Baha’i faith — a small but global religion with an interfaith credo — fits comfortably into the religious spectrum of most countries but in several Middle East nations, Baha’i followers face repression that is drawing criticism from rights groups.

The abuse is most evident in Iran, which bans the faith and has been widely accused of persecuting Baha’i followers, human rights advocates say. They also report systemic discrimination in Yemen, Qatar and Egypt.

Advocates say Iran’s government has pressed for repression of the Baha’i followers in countries where it holds influence, such as Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels control the northern half of the country, and Qatar, which shares with Iran the world’s largest natural gas field.

The Baha’i faith was founded in the 1860s by Baha’u’llah, a Persian nobleman considered a prophet by his followers. Muslims consider the Prophet Muhammad the highest and last prophet.

From the Baha’i faith’s earliest days, Shiite Muslim clerics have denounced its followers as apostates. That repression continued after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when many Baha’i followers were executed or went missing.

There are less than 8 million Baha’i believers worldwide, with the largest number in India.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.