Even though Turner was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt could have easily gotten 14 years for his crime, Persky opted to give the ex-Stanford swimmer a 6-month county jail sentence.
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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.
Santa Clara County Presiding Judge Rise Pichon said she has granted the request of Judge Aaron Persky.
The judge will begin exclusively hearing civil cases on September 6 in San Jose, which he was previously assigned to. And some people are really happy about it.
Persky has been the subject of intense criticism since giving Turner what was decried by many as a too-lenient sentence for the sexual assault of an unconscious, intoxicated woman on Stanford’s campus last January.
Fallout from the Turner case has already caused numerous disturbances in Judge Persky’s court.
Just days after recusing himself from a child pornography case, Santa Clara county judge Aaron Persky has requested to be reassigned, in an attempt to shutter himself off from any criminal cases, the Mercury News reports. Now, he’s asked only to hear civil cases.
“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”, Pinchon said.
There is no permanency in this new assignment to civil cases as judicial assignments actually rotate each year and must be approved by the judge presiding. “He can still transfer back to hearing criminal cases any time he chooses”, she said in a statement.
The sentence that many considered lenient and a powerful statement from the victim that was widely shared made the case a national rallying cry for a reconsideration of how sexual assault is handled by the courts.
“So, the issue of his bias still needs to be decided by voters”. This may come as good news to the nearly 1.3 million people who signed a petition to remove Persky from the bench altogether.
Turner was convicted in March of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person and penetration of an unconscious person.
Following Turner’s sentencing, Persky has received a significant amount of professional backlash.
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While sentencing the plumber to four days in jail previous year, Persky indicated he might be open to reducing the conviction to a misdemeanor, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
