Aaron Persky, the judge who leniently sentenced white Stanford University rapist Brock Turner, will stop hearing all criminal cases, finally stepping down after a barrage of criticism on Thursday.
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“I think we have a different political environment now, a changed political environment around sexual assault”, says Stanford Law School professor Michele Dauber, who led an effort to recall Judge Persky, in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
Judge Rise Pichon, the presiding judge, reportedly did not have any plans to move Persky out of Palo Alto but honored his request. “Judge Persky believes the change will aid the public and the court by reducing the distractions that threaten to interfere with his ability to effectively discharge the duties of his current criminal assignment”.
More recently, Persky’s critics have pointed to previous sentencing decisions as evidence of his alleged bias in sex-crimes cases, including three year’s in state prison he gave to an immigrant from El Salvador who admitted to sexually assaulting his roommate and four days in county jail to a man who plead guilty to a felony child-pornography charge.
“We don’t need a judge who is biased in favour of sexual harassment perpetrators and abusers in civil court either”, she said. Beginning Sept. 6, Persky will only preside over civil cases in order to not bring unwarranted attention to criminal cases he would rule on.
Turner blamed a “party culture” of “binge drinking” for the assault and Mr Persky asked him to attend drug and alcohol treatment. He recused himself from a new sex crimes case this week. 22, 2016 that Persky filed a statement saying that some people might doubt that he could be impartial.
In her widely circulated victim impact statement, the woman known only as “Emily Doe” called the six-month sentence “a soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of the assaults”. Persky himself requested the change, according to Mercury News.
In addition to his supervising judge, attorneys who have argued in front of Persky cite his abilities.
The uproar over the sentence, fuelled in part by the victim’s harrowing letter in which she detailed the assault, is part of growing outrage over sexual assault on U.S. college campuses.
The judge in that case, Judge Thomas Estes, in District Court in Palmer, Massachusetts, declined to comment. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
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