Leonie Brinkema

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Leonie M. Brinkema (born 1944, in Teaneck, New Jersey) is a United States District Court judge, in the Eastern District of Virginia.

From Dutch descent, judge Brinkema received her B.A. from Douglass College in 1966 and undertook graduate studies in philosophy at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1966) and New York University (1967-1969). She earned her M.L.S. at Rutgers University in 1970 and her J.D. at Cornell Law School in 1976.

She worked in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1976-1977, and then the U.S. Attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia, Criminal Division from 1977 to 1983. During 1983-1984 she returned to the Criminal Division and worked as a solo practitioner from 1984-1985. She was appointed a U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia in 1985, and worked in that role until 1993.

In 1993, Brinkema was nominated by President Bill Clinton for promotion to the bench of the Eastern District of Virginia, and took up her post on October 23, 1993.

Brinkema presided over RTC v. Lerma et al. (1995), a case that involved the reproduction of materials owned by the Church of Scientology. Brinkema found for the defendants in most of the claims, and awarded minimum damages of $2,500 for copyright infringement, citing the "increasingly vitriolic rhetoric" of RTC's legal filings.

On October 28, 2003, she sentenced al-Qaeda operative Iyman Faris to twenty years imprisonment for providing material support to the group.

Brinkema presided over the case of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.[1] In that case she asked the government about videotapes showing the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, but the government denied any existence thereof.[2] As she sentenced Moussaoui to life in a supermax prison, she told him he would "die with a whimper." [3]