On January 22, Asa Hutchinson, working with Venable’s Gilead Light, won a sentencing victory in Federal Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for former Pentagon employee James Fondren. Senior Judge Claude Hilton made a rare downward departure from the federal sentencing guidelines, imposing a sentence of three years instead of the 6.5 to 8 year sentence sought by the prosecution.
Hutchinson has represented Mr. Fondren since May of 2008. Mr. Fondren was indicted in May of 2009 on a total of 8 counts of espionage, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, and making false statements. During a four day jury trial in September, 2009 in Alexandria, the defense won a dismissal of the conspiracy and unregistered agent charges, and acquittals on two counts of espionage and one count of false statements. During Friday's sentencing for the single espionage and two false statement convictions, Judge Hilton found that the information disclosed caused little or no harm to US national security, and found that most of the information at issue was in the public record anyway.
