Roanoke attorneys Tony Anderson and Melissa Friedman scored an unusual win Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned embezzlement convictions of two former Burruss Co. executives stemming from the Lynchburg lumber business' collapse a decade ago.

The court opinion left untouched fraud and theft convictions of Chief Financial Officer Larry Carey and of Anderson and Friedman's client, company President John Jackson.

The decision sends both cases back to resentencing before U.S. District Court Judge Norman Moon. Anderson said recalculated sentencing guidelines for Jackson could have a low end of 70 months in prison, well below the nine years imposed in 2007.

The Supreme Court heard no oral arguments in the case. Anderson credited Friedman with writing most of the brief submitted for Jackson.

A peculiar facet of the case was that on Jan. 16, the U.S. Justice Department filed a brief opposing its own stand in lower courts.

The question was whether Jackson and Carey embezzled from an employee pension fund when they withheld money from it. Anderson and Friedman argued there could be no embezzlement from the fund because the money in question never went to it. Instead, as the government eventually said, the fund should have become a creditor in bankruptcy proceedings.

Anderson was clearly savoring the Supreme Court opinion.

"It's just hard to believe. ... It's exciting to get this result," he said.