A federal appeals court on Oct. 23 vacated lawyer Michael Avenatti’s prison sentence for defrauding clients and ordered a new sentence to be handed down.
Avenatti pleaded guilty to multiple fraud charges in 2022 after stealing money from clients and was sentenced to 14 years in prison later that year.
The U.S. judge who sentenced Avenatti failed to adequately support enhancing Avenatti’s sentence based on obstruction of justice and also did not accurately calculate the losses from the fraud, according to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
U.S. District Judge James Selna used an obstruction of justice enhancement while figuring out Avenatti’s sentence, but the judge “failed to make explicit findings as to the elements of obstruction of justice based on perjury, so the enhancement must be vacated,” the panel said in Wednesday’s unanimous decision….