What exactly did the judge say about the brutality of Ashley Sarazen's injuries during sentencing?
Executive summary
At sentencing in the killing of Ashley Sarazen, Dauphin County Judge William Tully described the defendant’s conduct as “demonic” and said Sarazen’s injuries were among the worst he had seen in his 40 years on the bench, noting that a forensic pathologist “trembled” while describing them; the judge framed his punishment as the only way to ensure the defendant could never inflict such harm again [1].
1. What the judge said, in his own words
Judge William Tully told the defendant that his actions were “demonic,” declared the wounds suffered by Sarazen to be “some of the worst he’s seen in his 40‑year career,” and explicitly referenced courtroom reaction — saying the case was the only one in which he’d seen a forensic pathologist tremble while testifying about the injuries — before concluding that the court could only guarantee the safety of others by ensuring the defendant would never again be in a position to inflict similar harm [1].
2. The injuries the judge was referring to
The brutality the judge cited was not rhetorical; forensic testimony presented at trial catalogued catastrophic trauma: dozens of broken ribs (reporting noted 22 rib fractures in one account), a destroyed liver, a left lung lacerated by a displaced rib, brain swelling with bleeding around the brain, and a torn and bruised heart, among other wounds attributed by the pathologist [1]. Other reporting from the same case summarized an even larger tally — as many as 76 internal and external injuries — and prior filings described injuries consistent with forced sexual penetration, which prosecutors added as charges based on the forensic exam [2] [3].
3. Why the judge emphasized the forensic witness’s reaction
Judge Tully’s mention that a forensic pathologist “trembled” while describing the injuries functioned as a courtroom shorthand for the extraordinary nature of the wounds: he used the expert’s visceral reaction to underscore that this was not ordinary violence but extreme, disfiguring trauma that left the victim “unrecognizable” to responders, a depiction reflected in contemporaneous reporting of the scene [1] [4]. The judge leveraged that expert reaction to justify the severity of the sentence and to explain the emotional tone of the hearing to the gallery of family and friends present [1].
4. Context and competing narrative offered at trial
While the judge characterized the injuries as “demonic” and among the worst he’d seen, the defendant’s account and parts of the defense case attempted to frame the incident as self‑defense or a less culpable episode; reporting noted Collins’ statements to police and his 911 remarks such as “I think I broke her neck,” and his claim that he was defending himself after an alleged altercation [4] [5]. The court’s choice to emphasize the brutality of the injuries — and the prosecutor’s reliance on graphic forensic testimony and added sexual‑assault counts — reflects prosecutorial framing and the judge’s stated perspective; those emphatic judicial descriptions sit alongside a contested record that jurors and the defense also engaged during trial [1] [3] [6].
5. What the public record supports and its limits
The precise phrases quoted above come from local reporting of the sentencing hearing and the judge’s remarks as published by PennLive, which reported the judge calling the crimes “demonic,” labeling the injuries among the worst of his career, and recounting that the pathologist trembled [1]. The catalog of injuries and the addition of rape charges after forensic findings are likewise reported in contemporaneous coverage [1] [3] [2]. The sources document the judge’s language and the underlying forensic claims; they do not include a full verbatim transcript of every sentence the judge spoke, so reporting reconstructs the most consequential quotations and context rather than providing a line‑by‑line transcript [1].