Julie Chrisley’s supervised release sentence should be readjusted, prosecutors say

In a brief filed Thursday, prosecutors admitted that Ross erred in adding two years to Chrisley’s supervised release sentenced on counts 7 (wire fraud) and 12 (obstruction of justice) and asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the sentence only relating to those two counts and the supervised release and send it back to Ross so a proper supervised release sentence can be imposed.

“The five-year term of supervised release on counts 7 and 12 is plain error because it exceeds the maximum term authorized by statute,” prosecutors wrote in their brief. “In such situations, this Court vacates the district court’s judgment only with respect to the supervised release term and remands with instructions to correct that issue.”

Prosecutors noted that both parties missed the change in the supervised release sentence and neither party objected during the resentencing in September. It wasn’t until the appellant brief was filed in December that defense attorneys brought up that Ross had inexplicably imposed a harsher sentence by extending her term of supervised release from three to five years.

In their appeal, attorneys for Chrisley alleged she received “a vindictive and unfair sentence” from a judge who is “personally biased against her and her family.”

“The court spent more time admonishing Mrs. Chrisley’s daughter, who was in the courtroom, for public statements she made critical of the case, which the court learned about off the record,” Chrisley’s attorneys wrote in an appellate brief.

Ross determined the seven-year prison sentence was still appropriate although prosecutors had subsequently agreed Chrisley was only directly responsible for $4.7 million of the amount that banks lost in the fraud. As a result, she reduced the amount of restitution against Julie Chrisley.

During the resentencing hearing, Julie Chrisley apologized publicly for the first time.

“I cannot ever repay my children for what they’ve had to go through, and for that I’m sorry,” she said in court as two of her children, Savannah and Chase Chrisley, watched. “I apologize for my actions and what led me to where I am today.”

Speaking to reporters immediately after the resentencing hearing, Savannah Chrisley and one of her mother’s lawyers said the judge’s in-court comments were inappropriate, upsetting and politically driven.

Prosecutors argued Ross was not vindictive in her sentence and Chrisley “misconstrues and overstates the record” regarding the comments Ross made from the bench.

“Regardless, the court expressed no animus towards Chrisley or her family at sentencing and made clear that the sentence it imposed — which it intended to be the same sentence that it imposed originally — had nothing to do with public statements made by Chrisley family members,” prosecutors wrote, adding that Ross even expressed sympathy for the Chrisleys’ minor two children.

In 2022, Julie Chrisley and her husband, Todd Chrisley, were jointly ordered to pay $17.2 million in restitution and to forfeit the same amount. A jury found they had defrauded Atlanta-area banks of $36 million and hidden millions of dollars in income from their reality television show to avoid paying taxes.