Sacramento Bee, 2/20/20:
Hours after President Donald Trump confidante Roger Stone was sentenced in a Washington, D.C., courtroom to 40 months, a Sacramento defense lawyer seized upon the controversy to argue that federal sentencing guidelines have been tainted by the case and that his client should serve no prison time.
The surprising result? A 13-month sentence of home detention for Andrey Kim, who pleaded guilty in a massive mortgage fraud case that began in 2006 and is estimated to have cost banks more than $16 million.
Kim, 36, was a loan officer whose involvement in the case was relatively minor and began when he was 23, attorney Tom Johnson argued Thursday in federal court in Sacramento.
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Prosecutors already had recommended a 50 percent reduction in his sentence to 13 months, but Johnson decided to raise the Stone case as an argument for why federal sentencing guidelines should not necessarily apply to his client.
The Stone sentencing has been enveloped in controversy since the president tweeted his displeasure about prosecutors’ recommendation that he receive a seven- to nine-year prison sentence.
The Justice Department ultimately changed the recommendation to three to four years. Four prosecutors in the case quit over the move, and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr has found himself facing calls for his resignation.
In Sacramento, Johnson argued that “this was a watershed moment for the guidelines” that govern how defendants are sentenced, and that although they are officially only recommendations for judges to follow they largely are followed to determine sentences.
“We are constantly talking about the guidelines with the government,” Johnson told U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley. “We’re always told how important those guidelines are, that they are set in stone. ... As it turns out, in a case 3,000 miles away from here in U.S. v Stone, the U.S. Attorney’s Office there has said that the guidelines are perhaps technically applicable.”