Stanford has been under scrutiny for its campus drinking culture and its relationship to sexual assault in recent months after a student, 20-year-old Brock Turner, was convicted in March of sexually assaulting a woman outside a fraternity party last year. Persky was supposed to decide whether to reduce the plumber’s conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor.
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Stanford University just made some new rules in the wake of a controversial campus rape case, but the new policy is probably not what students had in mind when they protested the university’s inaction on the Brock Turner rape case at commencement ceremonies in June. He faced as much as 14 years in prison, but was instead sentenced to just six months behind bars because Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky said he believed a longer sentence would have “a severe impact on him”, according to multiple media outlets. “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'”.
Persky didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Robert Chain, the plumber, was convicted of having nearly 200 child pornography images – some of the images showed children between 5 and 12-years-old.
Chain’s lawyer, Brian Madden, has said his client “worked hard” to turn around his life since his 2014 arrest, including receiving alcohol abuse counseling.
Christopher Kutz, a University of California at Berkeley law professor, told AP “no formal or actual conflict” seems to exist between the judge and Chain’s case, but the “appearance that he seems susceptible to political pressure” does.
Organizers of an effort to get Persky removed from the bench say they will begin collecting signatures in April to qualify the issue for the November 2017 ballot.
An official with the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet says both cases are examples of “rape culture at work”. Persky cited a probation department recommendation and the effect the conviction will have on Turner’s life.
The Turner case is still reverberating in other ways: Stanford has banned hard liquor at undergrad parties, in what campus officials said in a letter to students was an effort “to build a healthier campus culture around alcohol”. According to the campus newspaper the Stanford Daily, the new policy does not apply to beer and wine, which will still be allowed at on-campus undergraduate student parties.
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But the role of alcohol in sexual assault cases also drew scrutiny, particularly because Turner’s defense of the case involved his own impairment because of heavy drinking that night. She pointed to a letter from the president and provost in March that mentions alcohol poisoning and academic problems, as well as sexual assault, as reasons for the college’s concern over alcohol misuse.
