Lawyers for Mr. Nassar, who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, say the judge overstepped legal bounds in a long, emotional sentencing hearing.
Lawrence G. Nassar, the U. S. A. Gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing numerous young women, wants his prison term to be reconsidered, arguing that the judge was not fair or impartial and used the sentencing hearing to send a larger message against sexual abuse.
In court papers filed on Wednesday in Ingham County Circuit Court in Michigan, lawyers for Mr. Nassar said that the judge, Rosemarie Aquilina, had overstepped legal bounds when she sentenced him to 40 to 175 years in prison. They asked that he be resentenced by a different judge.
The emotional sentencing hearing before Judge Aquilina in January ran for seven days. More than 150 young women came forward to publicly confront Mr. Nassar, and much of it was featured on cable news shows. In the hearing, Judge Aquilina took an unusual approach: She offered words of encouragement to many of the women after they spoke, and she sharply dismissed Mr. Nassar when he said the women’s remarks were causing him mental distress.
[ Read the words of some of the women who confronted Mr. Nassar in court.]
Mr. Nassar’s lawyers asserted that Judge Aquilina had overreached throughout the hearing, denigrating Mr. Nassar and allowing herself to be seen as an advocate for the victims. At one point, the judge told a young woman: “Leave your pain here and go out and do your magnificent things.”
All of it, his lawyers suggested, meant that the circumstances of Mr. Nassar’s criminal case — the essential legal issue of the sentencing hearing — wound up overshadowed. “The entire sentencing proceedings were designed to send a message to the entire world, as Judge Aquilina stated over and over again,” the lawyers wrote.
An official in Judge Aquilina’s office said that the judge would not comment on Mr. Nassar’s request until after the case has made its way through appeals.
When Judge Aquilina held the sentencing hearing, Mr. Nassar had already entered a guilty plea to seven counts of sexually abusing girls. Mr. Nassar, 54, was convicted of molesting girls for years under the guise of giving them medical examinations and treatments. Many were Olympic gymnasts, others were Michigan State University athletes. Some of the girls were as young as 6.
Mr. Nassar also faces other lengthy sentences in federal and state courts, including 60 years for a child pornography conviction in a separate federal case.
Since his incarceration, Mr. Nassar has been physically attacked in a federal prison, his lawyers wrote. The court documents offered no details of the assault, which his lawyers said happened within a few hours of Mr. Nassar being placed in the general population, but they suggested that the judge’s approach was at fault.
“Unfortunately, Judge Aquilina’s comments and conducting of the sentencing proceeding appeared to encourage this type of behavior,” the lawyers wrote in their request to remove the judge.
