No, it's not. It's sympathy. Empathy involves a bit of imagination that most people lack.
edit:
"Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position."
Our argument is with your specific views on the meaning of words.
Other sources[1] define empathy as "feeling what another person feels" and sympathy as "having compassion for a person without necessarily feeling what they feel". In that case, the judge is clearly empathizing with the defendant, and not merely sympathizing.
edit:
"Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
It's just the way that these words happen to be defined in English. They stand for different, but related concepts.