Judge Michael Schipper Sentences Connected Defendant to 300 Days While Calling the Law “Bad”

A Man Is Dead. His Killer Got 300 Days.

Michael Norris was 70 years old. He had worked 45 years for the same employer, retired, lost his first wife to illness, remarried, and by all accounts was in the middle of a second life that was, by his wife Jane Pierce-Norris’s account, genuinely happy. On March 14, 2025, Cody Aspey drove into him and killed him.

Aspey’s prior driving record, as documented by the Norris family at sentencing, included reckless driving reports the day before the fatal crash, an alleged near-collision with a school bus in Delton on February 20, 2025, and post-accident violations including driving without insurance while he was not supposed to be driving at all. This is not a man who made one catastrophic mistake. This is a man with a documented pattern of dangerous behavior whose pattern culminated in a fatality.

The family was direct about this at sentencing. Norris’s daughter Kristen Cove described not hearing Aspey ask a single time about her father’s condition in the immediate aftermath of the crash. Pierce-Norris asked that Aspey serve his sentence away from his connections in the Corunna area, citing her belief that those connections had already bought him treatment the Norris family did not receive. “He seems to get special treatment,” she said from the stand.

The court, as currently configured, gave her no reason to doubt that read.

Schipper’s Bench Comments Are Not a Footnote

Judge Michael Schipper sentenced Aspey to 300 days — 65 days short of the statutory maximum on the moving violation causing death charge. He then explained, in open court, why he did not go higher. He called the statute “bad.” He called the sentencing cap “crazy.” He said he was “handcuffed” by the law.

Let’s be precise about what that is. A sitting judge, currently under reinvestigation by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, publicly criticized the legal constraint on his own sentencing authority while handing down a sentence that benefited the defendant. These comments were not compelled. They were not legally necessary. A judge can impose a sentence and state his reasoning without editorializing about whether the law is good. The choice to call it “crazy” in a proceeding where a connected defendant is about to receive a favorable outcome is not incidental.

It also hands Aspey’s attorney a narrative on appeal. If Schipper had wanted to undermine the sentence’s integrity, he found an efficient way to do it.

The Connection Is Not a Conspiracy Theory. It Is a Public Record.

Cody Aspey’s father, Jeffrey Aspey, is listed as a leader of AFSCME Local 2510 in public records available through unionfacts.com. AFSCME is one of the largest public employee unions in the country. Local 2510 represents workers in the region. This is not a tenuous inference. It is a documented fact.

The Norris family raised the issue of connections at sentencing. Pierce-Norris specifically asked that Aspey be incarcerated away from his family in the Corunna area because of those connections, and she named the concern plainly: he gets special treatment. The court record now shows a judge who called his statutory constraint “bad” while sentencing a man whose father holds institutional standing. That is not nothing.

To be precise about what Clutch Justice is asserting and what it is not: the documented record shows a connection, a favorable sentence, and judicial commentary that framed the law as the problem rather than the defendant’s conduct. What cannot be established from the public record is that Schipper made a direct calculation based on Jeffrey Aspey’s union position. What can be established is that this outcome is consistent with a pattern in which connection correlates with leniency in Schipper’s court, and that Schipper’s public comments during sentencing were unprofessional regardless of motive.

The Prosecutor’s Role Is Not Irrelevant Here

Moving violation causing death is a misdemeanor-grade charge with a maximum of 365 days. Michigan prosecutors have broad charging discretion. The documented facts in this case — a driver with prior reckless driving violations, a report for reckless driving the day before the fatal crash, an alleged near-miss with a school bus three weeks earlier, and post-accident driving violations — are the kind of pattern that supports consideration of more serious charges.

The decision to charge Aspey with the lowest available offense was made before the case ever reached Schipper. That decision constrained the sentencing ceiling. Schipper’s public complaints about the statute obscure a more foundational point: if Marcus Hayes and the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office believed the conduct warranted a longer sentence, they had charging tools available. They did not use them. The record is what the record is.

What Schipper’s JTC Status Means for Every Case He Decides

Schipper is not operating in a clean-record environment. His 2014 JTC misconduct finding is public. The Michigan Supreme Court remanded People v. Williams, Docket No. 167549, based on issues arising from his courtroom. Clutch Justice reported in April 2026 that the JTC has reinvestigated him. The current status of that reinvestigation is covered in prior reporting linked at the top of this piece.

Every sentencing decision Schipper makes now lands against that background. The Aspey sentence is not a one-off curiosity. It is another data point in a body of conduct that a sitting oversight body is actively reviewing. The Norris family deserved a sentencing proceeding before a judge whose record was clean. They did not get one.

The Counterargument — and Where It Fails

A fair reading of the sentencing includes this: Schipper did impose jail time. Aspey is not walking free. The 300-day sentence is not a suspended sentence or a fine. The 65-day remainder was withheld as leverage over probation compliance, which is a recognized sentencing tool. And Schipper’s frustration with the statutory ceiling, while poorly expressed, could reflect genuine disagreement with the law rather than favoritism.

That reading fails on its own terms. The issue is not whether Aspey received any punishment. The issue is whether he received a punishment proportionate to his conduct, administered by a judge with no conflicts. On the first question, the family’s documentation of Aspey’s prior record makes the below-maximum sentence hard to defend on its merits alone. On the second question, the JTC reinvestigation is ongoing and the 2014 misconduct finding is confirmed. The counterargument requires assuming the best about a judge the oversight record does not support assuming the best about.

What the Norris Family Put on the Record

Five members of the Norris family spoke at sentencing. Their statements documented Aspey’s prior violations, his failure to acknowledge Norris as a human being at any point in the proceedings, and what Cove called “a profound lack of empathy and accountability.” Pierce-Norris described a man who had 45 years of work behind him, a happy retirement, and a second marriage that was, by every account in the record, something he had earned. That second chapter ended because Cody Aspey kept driving when he knew he was tired, had a prior reckless driving report from the day before, and had not been stopped before the crash killed someone.

The family made their case clearly. The record shows what they were up against.