Media gathered outside the Southern District of New York Courthouse in Manhattan on Aug. 27, 2019, in advance of a posthumous hearing in the criminal case of Jeffrey Epstein.

At Tuesday's hearing in the Jeffrey Epstein criminal prosecution, a federal judge in Manhattan moved toward ending the case against the deceased financier, even as the judge openly defended his decision to let the alleged victims speak for as long as they wanted in a case that some lawyers argue should have been closed out with a short written order.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, a Southern District of New York senior judge, explained the reasoning behind his unique, and perhaps unprecedented, decision to allow the alleged victims to come before a packed Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday and give the equivalent of victim impact statements in a matter in which Epstein was never convicted, or even tried.

Epstein's death while in detention, ruled a suicide by officials, during the second week of August was "a rather stunning turn of events," Berman told a courtroom so densely packed that some onlookers stood along the walls.

And Epstein's demise thwarted, he said, the crucial part of the judicial criminal process in which "the accusers and the accused will come face to face."

Officially, Berman called the hearing Tuesday to address a nonprosecution motion lodged by Southern District of New York prosecutors in Epstein's case. Prosecutors are seeking to have the sex trafficking and conspiracy charges against Epstein—already a convicted sexual abuser of underage girls in Florida—dropped.

But the hearing that Berman decided to arrange—which some law professors argue went against criminal institutional structures devised for when a defendant has died—was more than a legal undertaking.

For nearly two hours Tuesday, some 15 victims came before the public and throngs of media and delivered their stories—statements of severe pain, of dreams extinguished, of psychological frustration and confusion, of yearning for closure—and, in effect, many of those victims for the first time, in their words, "found their voice."

Said one of them, as her voice choked and her hands gripped a podium in the courtroom's well: Because of his abuse of her, "he took away the chance I had at having a future, and the dreams I had for myself as a young girl."

"It's irreparable," she said of the pain, of the imprint he's had on her life, as she spoke to those gathered as a "Jane Doe" victim—and as now an adult.

It was those statements Tuesday that Berman also defended. During the first 15 minutes of the hearing, he sought to legally contextualize his decision to let the victims have their day. And he sought to speak to the need for victims to be heard.

"I believe it is the court's responsibility, and manifestly within its purview, to ensure the victims in this case are treated fairly and with dignity," Berman said.

Then, during a continuing series of statements, he added, "In my view, a public hearing is … preferred vehicle of resolution" for the Epstein case in New York, which prosecutors only lodged in July, years after Epstein was convicted of sex abuse crimes in Florida. (In that now-very controversial case, he was able to evade much state prison time and was released after 13 months.)

And Berman then took issue with a Law Journal column published Monday by law professors Bruce Green and Rebecca Roiphe.

The professors, arguing against Berman's hearing, had written, "But we should not distort the criminal justice process by importing this perceived societal need into the criminal courthouse when there is no proceeding in which hearing from the victims serves a legitimate criminal justice purpose."

The judge said he was "incredulous" about the column. He then noted that, at one point, the authors had said in their column, "This is an odd moment for transparency in a criminal case."

He told the courtroom, in turn, "I think that's an odd statement."

And he soon added, "A few may differ on this [decision to have the victim-centered hearing], but public hearings are exactly what judges do."

As the hearing closed Tuesday—the stuffy, high-ceiling courtroom silenced after many stories of pain—Berman simply looked out over the crowd and quietly thanked the victims and their lawyers—from David Boies to Gloria Allred to Brad Edwards—for saying all that they did.