LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Judge Rosemarie Aquilina is pushing back against the Ingham County prosecutor, saying her plea deals put the community at risk and because of that, she should be ousted from office.

During a court hearing and a case involving a double murder, Judge Aquilina said she changed the sentencing from the 30 to 50 years recommended by the county Prosecutor Carol Siemon to a sentence of 70 to 100 years in prison.

MORE NEWS: School Audits are More Than Data; They Tell a Story and the State Stopped Posting Them

Judge Aquilina said that since Prosecutor Siemon has been elected, she has been seeing plea deals that carry lighter-than-expected punishments.

Thirty-year-old Kiernan Brown received his sentence on Wednesday after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the 2019 deaths of Kaylee Brock and Julie Mooney.

He was charged in the hammer killings of the two women after he showed cellphone photos of their beaten bodies to sheriff’s deputies during a traffic stop.

Brown’s  sentencing took place about two years after Aquilina rejected a plea deal offered by Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon that would have set Brown’s minimum sentences in the range of 30 to 50 years.

The judge is not the only public official to speak out against the prosecutor’s policies. In 2021, Siemon released a policy that would no longer issue a 2-year felony firearm charge unless extreme circumstances are met in a case. At the time, Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wigglesworth called the policy “garbage.”