Defendants in Merchan’s courtroom say toughness of sentences depends on level of 'respect'

31 May 2024

According to past defendants who have had their criminal trials overseen by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, a guilty defendant's sentence depends entirely on their level of respect for the courtroom and how remorseful they are after the verdict is announced.

The Daily Beast recently interviewed several past defendants who Merchan sentenced in previous trials, and virtually all of them agreed that the judge who presided over Trump's first criminal trial was tough, but fair and even-keeled. One defendant was Andrew Rossig, who was sentenced over a BASE jumping incident in which he parachuted from the top of the One World Trade Center building in lower Manhattan (built over the original site of the Twin Towers) in 2013.

While Rossig and his two co-defendants were acquitted of felony burglary charges, they were found guilty of two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment. Merchan said the men "sullied the memories" of 9/11 victims, who jumped to their deaths on September 11, 2001 "not for sport but because they had to." While prosecutors asked for 60 days incarceration, Merchan said jailing the men wouldn't "serve the best interests of our community" and sentenced Rossig to 200 hours of community service.

Notably, Rossig said one of the other BASE jumpers was less remorseful and "kind of an ass" during proceedings and posted about the process to social media, and ended up getting more hours of community service in his sentence.

"I, myself, was pretty quiet and just tried to keep my mouth shut and be apologetic," Rossig told the Beast. "It seemed to me that [Merchan] was like, if you at least seem apologetic for the crime you did, he would be more lenient. I don’t ever remember saying to myself, ‘This judge is ridiculous and I‘m going to jail for the rest of my life.’ It was more like, ‘Treat him with respect and he’ll be fair.’"

"“I didn't feel any bias in there, like he took it personally or anything,” he added. “He wasn’t like, ‘Oh you guys were so reckless and you deserve to be punished for what you did. There was none of that. It was ‘just the facts.’”

Defendant Anna Gristina (also known as the "Soccer Mom Madam") was sentenced to five years of probation and time served — she had already spent four months in New York City's Rikers Island jail — for felony promotion of prostitution, even though the charge carried a maximum sentence of seven years. Whole Gristina said she wasn't personally a fan of Merchan and that the ordeal left her "emotionally drained and financially drained," that the sentence was also "the first vacation [she]'d had in 40 years."

While various legal experts have said it isn't likely that Merchan would punish Trump with the maximum allowable sentence of 20 years given his advanced age and his status as a first-time offender, the ex-president has also been devoid of respect in his attitude toward the proceedings.

Trump has shown what former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann called a "complete lack of remorse" after the verdict was read. Weissmann noted that Trump repeatedly violated Merchan's gag order on nearly a dozen occasions, which the judge imposed after Trump continuously attacked witnesses, jurors, court staff and even Merchan's own daughter for her work on Democratic political campaigns.

"It is impossible for me to think that they will not factor in that the judge has found ten violations of the gag order beyond a reasonable doubt. And those violations are not small things. The last one was finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, a disrespect of a court order to protect jurors," Weissmann said. "It's hard to think of something more serious."

Click here to read the Beast's full report.

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