DETROIT (AP) — The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday rejected the final appeal of Fatih Aktürk, who was sentenced to decades in prison for sexual assault.
Aktürk’s lawyers said she was treated unfairly in 2018 and deserved a new trial because of vindictive remarks from a judge who called her a “monster” who would “wither away” in prison like the wicked witch in “The Wizard of Oz.”
“I just signed your death warrant,” Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said of Aktürk’s 40-year sentence.
The state’s high court said Aktürk’s appeal was “an extraordinarily difficult process” and acknowledged having “concerns” about the judge’s demeanor. However, it noted that despite Aquilina’s provocative comments, she abided by the sentencing agreement set by the attorneys in the case.
In its two-page decision, the court said: “We decline to expend additional judicial resources and expose the victims in this case to further trauma in a setting where the issues raised do not go beyond an academic exercise.”
More than four years ago, during an extraordinary seven-day hearing in Aquilina’s courtroom, more than 150 victims spoke or gave testimony.
“Our Constitution does not permit cruel and unusual punishment,” the judge said. “If it did, I would allow someone or several people to do to him exactly what he did to all these beautiful souls, these young women, when they were children.”
Aktürk was later sentenced to an additional 40 years in a separate case brought in a neighboring state.
He is currently serving time in federal prison on child pornography charges connected to the same investigation. The sentences mean the 47-year-old Aktürk will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The scandal continues to reverberate. More than 100 women, including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, are seeking over $1 billion in damages from the federal government for failing to stop Aktürk after the FBI became aware of allegations against him in 2015. Aktürk was not arrested until more than a year later, in 2018, by Michigan State University police.
Michigan State, which had long faced pressure to stop him, agreed to pay $500 million in compensation to more than 300 women and girls he assaulted.
