Former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced Wednesday to 40 to 175 years in a Michigan court.
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina announced the verdict and Nassar, 54, will serve a minimum 45-year prison term, after pleading guilty to criminal sexual assault of girls. The trial involved more than 150 women, including Olympians Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney, who said Nassar sexually abused them.
According to the Associated Press, the judge declared that his "decision to assault was precise, calculated, manipulative, devious, despicable."
Speaking of the judge, many people have questions about the length of sentencing, instead of just life in prison.
The Michigan Penal Code states that a person is guilty of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree if that person is:
- Under 13 years old
- At least 13, but less than 16 years old if the person is in the same household as the victim, related to the victim by blood or affinity, if the person is in a position of authority and more.
ABC10 talked with UC Davis Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure professor Gabriel "Jack" Chin on why the judge may have come to the amount of years in her verdict.
"Life wouldn't necessarily mean life," said Chin. "In other jurisdictions, there's a possibility of parol after 25 years, [and] if you get a term of years instead of life, you have to serve a specified amount of years."
Chin continued to say that in Michigan, only first degree sexual misconduct authorizes a life sentence, according to the statute of maximum sentence. However, it's not natural life, which means the same as life without parol. He said it appears life was authorized, but it could possibly have been shorter.
"The statute specifically says that sentences can be consecutive," Chin said. "There's a way a judge can effectively put someone away for life, even though it's not the life without parol."
Chin also believes this is an extreme case, which determined the amount of years given.
"This is obviously an extremely egregious case," said Chin. "He abused vulnerable victims over a long, long period of time."
But Chin says in cases like these, the law is looking at what makes this case more serious or less serious than a typical one.
"Basically, we look at mitigation and aggregation, [and] we also look at the fact of criminal history," he said. "This isn't a case where a 19-year-old has consensual sex with a 17-year-old, [though] that type of case may be the same, it has a tremendously different set of circumstances."
Every state has their own penal codes for sentencing, and every case can be different, but for Nassar, it's landed him a 45-year minimum sentence.