The Mercury News reported Monday that Persky filed a statement with the court saying that some people might doubt that he could be impartial. The former Stanford swimmer was convicted of assault with the intent to commit rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual penetration of an intoxicated person.
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Judge Aaron Persky sentenced him to six months.
Aaron Persky, who faced a high-profile recall campaign after the case, has now requested to be reassigned to the civil division in Santa Clara County superior court, officials announced late Thursday.
“While I firmly believe in Judge Persky’s ability to serve in his current assignment, he has requested to be assigned to the civil division, in which he previously served”, Presiding Judge Risë Jones Pichon said in the statement.
Pichon said the reassignment will become effective September 6.
“After the guilty verdict I expected that this case would serve as a very strong deterrent to on-campus assaults, but with the ridiculously lenient sentence that Brock Turner received, I am afraid that it makes a mockery of the whole trial and the ability of the justice system to protect victims of assault and rape”, a letter to Persky from the anonymous juror read.
Judge Persky said he had come to the verdict based on the fact Turner had no prior convictions and had a positive character reference.
The victim in the Brock Turner sexual assault case was not publicly identified, but she disagreed with the probation report and penned a powerful victim impact statement, which was read by millions.
The California judge infamous for dishing out a slap on the wrist for Brock Turner’s sexual assault will no longer hear criminal cases.
Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, who has been working to have Persky recalled, said the judge’s reassignment will not stop that effort.
“The issue of his judicial bias in favor of privileged defendants in sex crimes and domestic violence still needs to be addressed by the voters of Santa Clara County”, Dauber said in an email to the Associated Press.
Dauber and other organizers have said they will begin collecting signatures in April to qualify the issue for the November 2017 ballot.
Persky had already removed himself from two sex-crimes cases since his June sentencing of the 20-year-old Turner exploded in national media.
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Persky was to decide whether to reduce plumber Robert Chain’s felony conviction for possession of child pornography to a misdemeanor, as he indicated he might when he sentenced Chain to four days in county jail a year ago.
