Adjunct Professor Joel Cohen wrote an op-ed in the New York Law Journal about Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s sentencing of Dr. Larry Nassar.
[L]et’s look at that final day of sentencing in the case of Larry Nassar. The man deserves no forgiveness, no pity. Nothing could serve to mitigate what he had done for decades. Yet, did Judge Rosemarie Aquilina of Lansing, Mich., who has been heralded in many quarters for her conduct when sentencing Nassar and been given a screenshot on the front page of The New York Times, go too far? Not by allowing more than 150 of Nassar’s victims to address him and tell him in the starkest terms what he had done; his victims should tell him, the court and all the world what he had done.
But when it came time to impose sentence, Judge Aquilina’s final words to Nassar were angry and vehement. She did not render her sentence dispassionately. Instead she told Nassar that she had the “privilege” to sentence him; that his actions were “devious” and “despicable.” She told him that, if the Constitution allowed, she might allow others to do to him what he did to his victims. And finally, to applause in the courtroom, as she essentially solicited: “I just signed your death warrant.”
Does society need retribution in the form of a judge pointing her finger at the defendant using the same kind of invective that one might see—and, indeed, expect—from an individual victim? Is society better off—indeed, are the victims better off—if the judge herself or himself lashes out at a defendant for his crimes, however horrible, as if he or she was the victim who had personally suffered at the hands of the defendant? Should we want judges to basically descend from the bench and the majesty of the position they hold, stand in the well of the court and become finger pointers—trash talkers, as it were—as if they themselves were now empowered victims? Just how much should a judge relate to those harmed?