Judge Rosemarie Aquilina Isn’t Done Listening Yet

And that’s pretty much how Rosemarie Aquilina has rolled. She did it her way when she got married after college at Michigan State University (yep, she’s an alumna of the university where Nassar worked) and had not one but two babies during law school at Western Michigan University. She did it her way when she joined the Army National Guard and became the first female judge advocate general, or JAG, in Michigan history. She did it her way when she had twins at 52. And she did it her way at Ingham County Circuit Court when she let 156 survivors speak as long as they wanted so they could begin to heal.

Aquilina took her first job assisting then Michigan state senator John F. Kelly and later started her own family practice, Aquilina Law Firm. As a respite from her heavy caseload, she started writing crime novels during her lunch hour. (Her first book, Feel No Evil, revolves around a rape; the second, Triple Cross Killer, abused children. “I’d wake up at two in the morning to get my character out of trouble,” she says, and sit down to write.) She also joined the Army National Guard, putting in at least one weekend a month and a couple of weeks a year. “I don’t know when she ever really slept,” says Colonel John Wojcik, Michigan National Guard’s general counsel. “She is passionate with an unquenchable drive, and she has a good judicial temperament. I always found her to be balanced and fair regardless of whether I was prosecuting or defending a case.”

Then in 2002 she realized a few weeks a year as a JAG weren't enough. She was sitting with a court-appointed client in her private practice when something clicked. “This was a mother who beat her teenage daughter with a belt buckle,” she recalls. “I can still picture this girl. The bruises were so swollen, I mean, it was gut-wrenching. I said, ‘Look, you can’t do this.’ And she said, ‘That’s how I control her.’ I literally had to sit on my hands because I wanted to lean over and choke her. I thought right then: I need to be able to say, ‘You’re going to prison and here’s the treatment, here’s how to fix this.’ ”

And so in 2004, at age 46, Aquilina ran for the Fifty-Fifth District Court in Ingham County and won. She’s been on the bench ever since, having been elected to the county’s higher Thirtieth Circuit Court in 2008. From her first bang of the gavel, she has insisted on hearing from victims, their families, and anyone impacted by the crime “so I can get the full picture to make the best decision,” she says. And she’s always made sure they have a safe space to tell their stories: “When you ask, ‘What would you like me to know?’ it empowers them. They go, ‘Someone’s listening; let me talk now.’”

Aquilina is just as committed to hearing from the offenders and their families. “She was very good at allowing the defense attorneys to walk their cases through, even if they were kind of crazy arguments,” Col. Wojcik remembers, “so if the defendants [lost], they could look their lawyer in the eye and say, ‘Hey, you got to give it your best shot and the judge let me say my piece.’ That goes a long way.”

No one was more shocked at the response to the Larry Nassar sentencing than Aquilina. “After it was over, I took a break and went and did four probation violations. I had no idea that the world was exploding,” she says. “I just did what I always do.” In the crush of attention, she heard from other judges who charged, “You are a disgrace,” and, “How dare you behave like this?” for her rebuke of Nassar from the bench. Aquilina doesn’t care: “When I spoke harshly, I did it to deflate all that tenseness in the courtroom where I was afraid people were going to rush him.” The Circuit Court’s Chief Judge Richard Garcia agreed. “Judge Aquilina clearly understood the role of righteous indignation. She also understood the role of the court to have this emotion controlled by the judge rather than allow it to run wild in the community,” he wrote in response to Nassar’s first appeal. “This was a controlled burn.”