The new rules drew criticism from some quarters, including Stanford law professor and sociologist Michele Landis Dauber, who called the restrictions misguided.
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The Santa Clara County judge facing a recall threat for giving a relatively light sentence to former Stanford student Brock Turner has disqualified himself from making his first key decision in another sex case.
While examining Perksy’s record, Dauber found a case involving the plumber, Robert Chain.
“While on vacation earlier this month, my family and I were exposed to publicity surrounding this case”, the judge wrote in a brief ruling. “This publicity has resulted in a personal family situation such that ‘a person aware of the facts might reasonably entertain a doubt that the judge would be able to be impartial, ‘” he wrote.
If Persky had granted Chain’s request, the plumber would still have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life for having graphic images on his computer.
On Thursday, the judge abruptly notified the lawyers in the case who were scheduled to appear in his Palo Alto courtroom on Friday. Persky had suggested that he might be open to reducing Chain’s conviction to a misdemeanor when he sentenced him to four days in the county jail previous year. The judge said he would consider reducing the conviction if Chain complied with the terms of his probation.
Turner said in a statement to the judge at the time that he “made a mistake” because he “drank too much”, citing peer pressure and “the culture surrounded by binge drinking and sexual promiscuity that protrudes through what people think is at the core of being a college student”. Douglas Fierberg believes the real issue, which is allowing fraternities to govern themselves, will not be solved with the new alcohol policies at Stanford. Turner could have faced up to 14 years in prison.
The judge, Aaron Persky, followed a recommendation by a county probation department to sentence Turner and became the target of a recall campaign.
Dauber also fears that Stanford’s new policy to restrict alcohol at parties could make students turn to binge drinking in their residences prior to going to parties where only beer and wine can be served. According to NPR News, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, and Notre Dame have all had similar bans in place for years and Dartmouth and Univ. of Virginia both implemented similarly restrictive measures following high-profile sexual assault cases.
“In an effort to reduce the availability and accessibility of hard alcohol, Stanford University has updated its student alcohol policy to prohibit high-volume distilled liquor containers for all undergraduate and coterminal students [undergraduates studying for a master’s degree while completing their bachelor’s degree (s) in the same or different department] living in undergraduate housing”.
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For starters, under Stanford’s new policy, those who are drunk when they are sexually assaulted could choose not to report their rapes, for fear of being punished for breaking the school’s hard alcohol ban.
