Born on February 13, 1920, Kaufman served as a navigator for the Army Air Force during World War II. He became a POW (
prisoner of war) in a
Japanese prison camp when his plane was shot down after 27 missions. After the war, Kaufman graduated from
Wayne State University Law School in 1948, and joined his father's firm before winning the election for Common Pleas Court Judge in 1959, and
Wayne County Third Circuit Court of Michigan in 1964 where he served for 30 years.
Vincent Chin ruling Kaufman is the judge who sentenced former
Chrysler plant superintendent
Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz on March 16, 1983, to three years' probation and $3,780 in fines and court costs after they were convicted of manslaughter for the killing of
Vincent Chin. Asian-American advocacy groups were outraged. Ebens and Nitz went to hunt down Chin after an altercation that had
happened at a strip club. Ebens paid a friend $20 to help them find Chin, finding him 30 minutes later at a nearby McDonald’s. Nitz held Chin down while Ebens viciously bludgeoned Chin with a baseball bat until his head cracked open. The act was a
hate crime, as multiple witnesses claimed to hear Ebens say, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work," referring to the
Japanese auto industry, particularly Chrysler's increased sales of
captively-imported Mitsubishi models rebadged and sold under the
Dodge and now-defunct
Plymouth brands, and Nitz's layoff from Chrysler in 1979, despite the fact that Chin was of Chinese descent, not Japanese. Citing the judge's POW record in a Japanese prison camp as one of several reasons to invalidate the sentence in favor of a more stringent punishment, advocacy groups unsuccessfully tried to vacate the original sentence. There were no minimum sentencing guidelines at the time for a manslaughter plea. Kaufman also cited the defendants' clean prior criminal records as he responded, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal." Kaufman's sentence was upheld as valid and final, due to the
Fifth Amendment protection against
double jeopardy, and the advocacy groups shifted their efforts toward a Federal prosecution for the violation of Vincent Chin's civil rights. This would also prove ultimately unsuccessful after an appeal and retrial of Ebens' original 1984 federal conviction resulted in acquittal. Kaufman later retired from the Third Circuit Court, and died on June 30, 2004. ==Personal life==