Judge Rise Pichon, the presiding judge, reportedly did not have any plans to move Persky out of Palo Alto but honored his request. On Monday, Persky formally excused himself from the case, after he was faced with the decision of reducing a San Jose plumber’s felony charges to simple misdemeanors. And some people are really happy about it.
Advertisement
Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Turner, 20, to six months in jail earlier this year after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting an incapacitated woman in January 2015. Judges are rotated every year, and he could transfer back to criminal court in the future.
Persky’s decision to no longer hear criminal cases comes after he recused himself from another sex crime case earlier this week, citing potential doubt from the public of his impartiality, the Mercury News reported.
Authorities say Turner sexually assaulted the girl while she was passed out near a trash bin.
“It’s unusual, but not unprecedented”, judicial ethics expert Richard Zitrin said of Persky’s transfer request.
“Sentencing a felon convicted of such a crime to probation re-victimises the victim, discourages other victims from coming forward and sends the message that sexual assault of incapacitated victims is no big deal”, said California Assemblymember Bill Dodd, who introduced the measure in June. Prosecutors had asked for Turner to be jailed for six years.
Judge Vincent Chiarello will take Persky’s place in Superior Court in Palo Alto.
Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, who has been working to have Persky recalled, said the judge’s reassignment will not stop that effort. “Many issues affecting women are heard in civil court every day”, she said, pointing to a 2007 civil case Persky oversaw involving a group of De Anza College baseball players accused of gang raping a young woman.
As a result of Turner’s sentence and wider criticism over US rape cases and rape culture, California lawmakers chose to push through a bill prohibiting persons convicted of sexual assault from being sentenced to only a probation. The victim sued civilly, and Persky made a series of rulings that the lawyers have said publicly were biased. Santa Clara County deputy public defender Gary Goodman in June called him a “solid and respected judge”, while defense attorney Barbara Muller said he’s “one of the fairest judges” in the county.
Advertisement
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 previous year.
