One of Nassar’s attorneys, Malaika Ramsey-Heath, argued that during his sentencing, non-relevant topics were brought up. She said victims commented on the MSU administration, along with the Michigan legislature, and those topics should not have been in consideration.

“Doctor Nassar is entitled to resentencing because a number of extraneous factors were allowed to influence the sentence,” Ramsey-Heath said.

Nassar’s lawyers’ requests for resentencing and to be resentenced by a new judge were also denied in Ingham County. 

Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced Nassar to 40 to 175 years of prison after he accepted a plea deal to seven counts.

Similar points about attention and emotional elements surrounding victim impact statements during sentencing were brought up in August in Ingham County court.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Laura Moody restated the same justification of an emotionally-charged period of victim impact statements to Judge Cunningham as she brought before Judge Aquilina.

“The sentencing hearing that this court conducted for over three days was not held solely to impose a sentence on Larry Nassar, it was also held to allow the victims to express the pain and trauma they suffered at his hands, and express it they did,” Moody said.

Nassar’s defense argued the necessity of a new judge, reasoning that the court had already been exposed to the non-pertinent statements.

Cunningham said the attention Nassar’s case received did nothing to add or subtract from the factors considered in his sentencing and abided by the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

She said nowhere in the act are victims limited on what they can speak about. They can talk about the extent of any physical, psychological and emotional trauma endured. 

Victims were granted the right to speak about their experiences as a whole, according to the act and the plea agreement Nassar agreed to.

“This court did not engage in considering any impermissible factors in individually tailoring the defendant's sentence within the confines of the plea agreement, the agreement that he reached with the Attorney General,” Judge Cunningham said. “The court considered the factors that I am legally obligated to go through.” 

In addition to the Ingham and Eaton county sentences, Nassar is serving a 60-year federal sentence on child pornography charges.