“We’re pleased that Judge Persky won’t be handling criminal matters at least temporarily … he can transfer back to hearing criminal matters at any time”, Michele Landis Dauber, a law professor who led a campaign to remove Persky, was quoted by the Guardian.
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The judge will instead be transferred to the civil division starting on September 6, where his caseload will focus on lawsuits instead of criminal trials. And some people are really happy about it.
Stanford University student Brock Turner was found guilty of raping a woman behind a dumpster on campus in January 2015. The judge said a year ago he would be receptive to the idea if the plumber stayed sober. Judge Vincent J. Chiarello, who has the bonus of living close to the Palo Alto courthouse will switch places with Persky once the assigned date arrives. Prosecutors had asked for Turner to be jailed for six years. “In our opinion, Judge Persky is biased and should not be on the bench, so the issue of his bias still needs to be decided by voters”.
Persky explained a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on the college athlete’s future.
Aaron Persky, the infamous judge who handed out an extremely light punishment for convicted Stanford rapist Brock Turner, will no longer be presiding over criminal cases. In the wake of Turner’s case, several groups have attempted to have Persky removed from his position as judge. The Recall Persky campaign is organizing a rally for that morning at the county Hall of Justice in San Jose with congressional members, local elected leaders, sexual-assault survivors and activists. Persky acknowledged the public outrage over the sentence this week, according to a statement by the county’s presiding judge.
Persky had already departed from two sex-crimes cases since his June sentencing of the 20-year-old Turner exploded in national media.
In response to the sentence, lawmakers in California are moving a bill through the legislature that prohibits anyone convicted of sexual assault in the state from being sentenced just to probation. “Treating sexual assault like a misdemeanor, which isn’t common but it does happen, is completely unacceptable going forward”.
Turner, a talented swimmer from Dayton, Ohio, was arrested after two graduate students came across him lying on top of a partially clothed, unconscious woman in a field near a trash bin.
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And last week, Persky recused himself from an upcoming hearing in the child-pornography case, citing exposure to publicity that “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”.
