REDFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. – A Michigan judge fed up with laughter in her courtroom tossed a woman in jail during a sentence hearing Thursday.
The woman – identified as Donna Kosal – is the mother of Amanda Kosal, who was eventually sentenced to 3 to 15 years in prison for drunkenly crashing head-on into an SUV last summer, according to WDIV. The wreck killed 31-year-old Jerome Zirker and critically injured his fiancee, 31-year-old Brittany Johnson.
After Zirker’s sister read an emotional statement describing the loss of her brother, Judge Qiana Denise Lillard addressed the court.
“Whoever can sit here at a tragic moment like this and laugh and smile when somebody has lost a family member … in the entire time that Mr. Zirker’s sister was speaking, that clown — and that’s what I am going to call him, a clown — was sitting there smiling and laughing,” Lillard said.
“And you can go, too,” the judge said to Donna Kosal. “Because if you don’t know how to act, you can go to jail. So leave.”
Kosal first walked out of the court but Lillard ordered her back to be sentenced for criminal contempt. “Your disruptive and disrespectful behavior disrupted today’s proceedings and you, ma’am, are going to the Wayne County Jail for 93 days,” Judge Lillard said.
Lillard said to the drunk driver’s family in the back of the courtroom:
“I understand you all are very upset because your loved one is going to prison – but guess what? She’s going to prison for the choices that she made. These people are here grieving, saddened because a senseless act took away their loved one, and you’re sitting here acting like it’s a joke? Not in Courtroom 502. Not today and not any other day.”
Kosal spent the night in jail, but Lillard allowed her to leave the following day after Kosal apologized. Kosal told the court she had been under “a lot of stress,” according to WDIV.
