Savannah Chrisley says the judge who upheld her mother Julie Chrisley’s 84-month sentence was retaliating.
Savannah, 27, opened up about the recent ruling on her mother’s ongoing prison sentence during the Tuesday, Oct. 1, episode of her podcast, Unlocked.
“I truly do believe that this judge, everything that she has done has been in retaliation,” Savannah claimed. “It has been in retaliation for us exercising our right to an appeal and being granted in part a successful appeal.”
On Wednesday, Sept. 25, Julie, 51, was resentenced to the same 84 months of prison she previously received. During the hearing at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in downtown Atlanta, Julie stood before Judge Eleanor L. Ross and apologized for her actions. Savannah and her brother Chase Chrisley were in attendance.
In November 2022, Julie was sentenced to seven years in prison, while her husband, Todd Chrisley, 55, received a 12-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion. The next month, they began the appeal process and then reported to their respective prisons in January 2023.
More than a year later, in an April 2024 appeal hearing, a judge granted Julie’s appeal and vacated her seven-year sentence in June due to insufficient evidence. However, Todd’s sentence was upheld. Last week, Julie was resentenced, after Ross ruled that her original punishment was sufficient.
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Savannah continued to express her frustrations with the ruling during her podcast. “The judge showed that this was more than just us exercising our right to an appeal,” she said. “This was her not liking how outspoken I am.”
The judge was “indirectly reprimanding [her] in the courtroom during a sentencing hearing that was not [Savannah’s] sentencing hearing,” Savannah said, adding, “After that hearing where, it felt like it was a punch in the gut. Because to think that I did something that harmed my mother’s ability to be a free woman that one stung really bad.”
“That was her way of telling me, ‘You better shut up because it’s only going to get worse for you,’ ” Savannah alleged.
Savannah said she would continue to speak out, saying, “At this point, I have nothing else to lose. My mom’s in there. My dad’s in there. What do I have to lose at this point? I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
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After the Sept. 25 ruling, Savannah and Chase joined their family’s attorney, Alex Little, during a press conference in a video obtained by Entertainment Tonight. In it, she said the ruling “is 100 percent [an] injustice.”
“What has happened is an injustice,” she explained. “I will continue to fight for my parents. And I will be as loud as I can possibly be because the judge clearly showed today that she was using my outspokenness to change a system that is so broken.”
