Today the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in U.S. v. Montgomery that interprets Blakely and Ameline and I thought some of you might be interested. In a nutshell, the Ninth Circuit followed Ameline and sent the defendants case back to the judge for resentencing in conformance with the guidelines, but deleting all upward enhancements for amount of money.

In this case, the defendants got busted for fraud relating to certain rental units they were managing. Basically, they were accused of diverting rental revenues from the owners to their own pockets (i.e. embezzlement). One of the defendants had his conviction overturned cause there were some spousal privilege issues and the other defendant, his sister, had her decision affirmed, but her sentence was vacated cause she received 7 points of upward enhancements for amount of money. The court of appeals said, no way, you must resentence her without the 7 points cause the jury did not decide the amount of the loss.

Here is a link to the case for those of you that are interested.

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/opinions+by+date?OpenView&Start=1&Count=100&Expand=1.1#1.1
Hopefully, this is what they do for a lot of others.