California Judge Who Let Stanford Rapist Off Easy, Recalled by County Vote

Judge who ruled in sex assault case, recalled in Santa Clara County

By Bob Egelko 

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was recalled

Photo: Jason Doiy / Associated Press

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was recalled from office by the voters Tuesday, two years after he set off national outrage by sentencing a Stanford athlete to six months in jail for sexually assaulting and attempting to rape an unconscious woman.

With 43 percent of precincts reporting, 59 percent of the county’s voters favored recalling Persky while 41 percent opposed the recall. On the same ballot, Assistant District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson led civil rights lawyer Angela Storey, 70 to 30 percent, in the election to serve the last four years of Persky’s term.

Takeaway: Persky, a judge for 15 years, is the first California jurist to be recalled since 1932.

“This is a sad day for the California judiciary,” said LaDoris Cordell, a former Santa Clara County judge who was active in the campaign against the recall. She said the vote sends a message to judges that “if they don’t go along with popular opinion ... they can lose their job.”

When Judge Persky sentenced Brock Turner to 6 months for raping an unconscious girl - that was a sad day for the California judiciary. Maybe it's time judges learn that popular opinion is what it is because of pathetic decisions like the Brock Turner case. If they don't soon decide that rape is rape whether on a university campus or whether or not the victim is passed out - they should lose their job.

Henderson, Persky’s successor, has been a Santa Clara County prosecutor since 1995. She supported the recall and was endorsed by the campaign’s organizer.

“My goal was to give voters a meaningful choice in the recall election,” she said Tuesday night. She promised to “work really hard to gain the respect of my fellow judges.”

For the first time since 1977 people power has forced a sitting US judge out of office. In 2016 Judge Aaron Persky faced international criticism for giving ex-Stanford student Brock Turner a six-month jail term, He was found guilty of three felonies after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, for which the law prescribed a minimum of two years. Long before the #MeToo movement exploded, the lenient sentence spurred Stanford law professor Michele Landis Dauber, a family friend of the victim, to launch the successful recall campaign.

Persky did not issue a statement after the vote. Organizers of the recall could not be reached for comment.

Background: Persky, 56, was a deputy district attorney who prosecuted sex crimes before Gov. Gray Davis appointed him to the bench in 2003. He won two new six-year terms without opposition and drew little public attention or criticism until 2016, when he presided over the sexual assault trial of Stanford student Brock Turner.

Turner, 19 at the time, was arrested after two graduate students on bicycles discovered him late one night in January 2015 lying on top of an unconscious woman and caught him when he tried to run away. Turner denied assaulting the 22-year-old woman, maintaining they had acted consensually after meeting at a fraternity party where both had been drinking heavily, but a jury convicted him of three felonies.

The crimes were punishable by up to 14 years in prison, and prosecutors sought a six-year sentence. But Persky noted that the court’s probation officer had recommended a jail sentence of a year or less after speaking with the victim. The judge also cited Turner’s youth and lack of a criminal record, the “severe impact” a prison term would have on him, and his obligation to register annually with police as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

The victim, identified only as Emily Doe, spoke at the sentencing hearing, telling Turner he had taken away “my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence.” She said she considered the proposed jail sentence “an insult to me and all women.”

The statement went viral, galvanized women’s rights advocates, and touched off a campaign that generated nearly 100,000 signatures on recall petitions. It was also instrumental in the rapid enactment of a new state law requiring at least three years in prison for sexual penetration of an unconscious victim.

The recall campaign was organized by Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor whose daughter was a friend of Emily Doe. Dauber accused Persky — a former Stanford lacrosse player — of bias in favor of athletes and affluent white defendants. In one of those cases, Persky allowed a man charged with domestic violence to go to Hawaii and try out for the college football team, and to return there after pleading guilty. In another, he gave a domestic violence defendant a jail sentence that allowed him to attend football practices.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance examined those cases, and Turner’s, and said they failed to show that Persky was biased. Turner’s sentence was within the bounds of the law, the commission said, and prosecutors had agreed to the other sentences or did not object to them.

Universities Face Increasing Pressure to Address Campus Sexual Assault

Many universities revising policies in wake of Brock Turner scandal and other high-profile assault cases

By Brandie Weikle, CBC News 


University of British Columbia, above, is one of several universities in Canada and the U.S. that have revamped their policies on sexual assault in wake of high-profile cases that have raised questions about whether schools have done enough to address the issue. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

University of British Columbia students got an extra jolt along with their caffeine fixes when they returned to campus last week.

The school's student union, the Alma Mater Society (AMS), has launched a campaign to raise awareness of campus sexual assault, wrapping coffee cups in sleeves that draw attention to UBC's track record for disciplining offenders.

The coffee sleeves make a stark comparison, showing that while 257 students were suspended over a 10-year period for plagiarism or other academic cheating, none were suspended for sexual assault during that same time. They also encourage students to weigh in while the university seeks feedback on its new sexual assault policy.

UBC Sexual Assault awareness 


UBC's Alma Mater Society has launched a coffee cup sleeve campaign to encourage students to provide feedback on the review of the university's sexual assault policy. (Michelle Huang/Twitter)

"Sexual assault has been an issue almost as long as campuses have been around," says Ava Nasiri, president of AMS. While progress has been made, more needs to be done to make victims comfortable coming forward, and to send a message to perpetrators at campuses everywhere that sexual violence has serious consequences, she says.

The need for more progress is a big topic on campuses across the country this year as many schools try to improve their policies for protecting students.

Stanford under the microscope

But perhaps no school anywhere is under more scrutiny than California's Stanford University.

Former student Brock Turner — convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman near a fraternity party — was released from jail on Sept. 2, completing half of a six-month sentence that sparked international outrage and an online petition to remove the judge who presided over his case. Judge Aaron Persky has since asked to hear only civil cases.

Brock Turner released from San Jose jail 0:20

The prestigious school issued new limits on hard alcohol last month, a move widely criticized for putting the onus on women to drink less, rather than on men not to commit sexual assaults.

Stanford said the new restrictions are "a harm-reduction strategy" aimed at curbing the medically risky rapid consumption of hard liquor. But the student body quickly connected the new policy with the Turner case, given that during the trial Turner said he was inexperienced with alcohol before beginning college.

Ralph Castro, director of Stanford's Office of Alcohol Policy and Education (OAPE), told campus newspaper The Stanford Daily that the new policy was not a result of a recent focus on sexual assault, but rather previous initiatives that had been underway since 2011.

Shelby Travers says she was sexually assaulted on Humber College's north campus at the end of the last school year. While Travers says she was treated well by school administrators when she came forward, more needs to be done to ensure safety at school events. (Cathy Bidini)

'Alcohol is not consent'

Shelby Travers, a second-year student in media communications at Humber College, was watching the Brock Turner case unfold while coping with the immediate aftermath of being sexually assaulted on campus the day before classes ended last academic year.

She describes her assailant as "someone who at the time I thought was my friend and who just abused that sense of comfort and pushed boundaries, and, frankly, at the end of the day didn't respect me or what 'no' means."


Protesters at a Stanford University commencement ceremony in Palo Alto, Calif., hold signs to raise awareness of sexual assault on campus in the wake of the national attention brought by the Brock Turner case. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)

Travers, who opted not to report what happened to police, says her case was handled well and efficiently by the college's department of student conduct, which has banned the perpetrator from campus until 2018. Still, she says she'd like to see student governments work with their colleges and universities to ensure safety at school events.

'When I was giving my statement I was asked,

"Had you had anything to drink?"

and I just don't see why it's relevant.

It's not.'

- Shelby Travers, sexual assault victim

"That's where a lot of these incidents happen, at the school bar, at these events where people are mistaking being under the influence with consent," Travers says. "Alcohol is not consent. That's where the whole victim blaming or shaming comes in — 'Oh, you had a drink,' or 'You were wearing a short skirt' — none of that means anything. When I was giving my statement I was asked, 'Had you had anything to drink?' and I just don't see why it's relevant. It's not."

She is correct in saying that whether or not she had been drinking is irrelevant to the issue of consent and should not be a matter in trials or investigations except that if a girl is passed-out drunk, she cannot give consent, as per Brock Turner. 

Apart from the morality or legality of the rape, drinking until you are passed out is really pretty stupid in the real world. The real world is ugly and there are predators waiting to take advantage of any weakness in a potential victim. Drinking to the point of passing out seriously increases your chances of getting raped - that should be obvious. It should also be obvious that responsible drinking decreases your chances of being raped. It is never the girl's fault if she is raped, but there are common-sense things she can do to mitigate the risk.

New policy at U of T

The University of Toronto released a new draft policy on sexual assault last Wednesday.

Provost Cheryl Regehr said the policy is the result of consultations and committee work that have been ongoing since November 2014.

But the timing of the policy announcement was intentional, she says.

"We wanted to have the draft policy ready for when the students came back to school so that all students would have an opportunity to provide input."

Provincial law also requires all Ontario universities and colleges to have sexual violence policies in place by January 2017, a change that came about as a result of the government's "It's Never OK" action plan on sexual violence.

Front and centre in the U of T policy is the creation of new "sexual violence prevention and support centres" on all three campuses.

The policy also makes a distinction between disclosing an assault and making a formal report. Victims won't be required to file a formal report with campus authorities or police in order to access support as well as academic, employment and other accommodations, Regehr said.

Former Stanford student Brock Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, but served only three months of the six-month sentence that sparked international outrage and calls for reform in how universities and the justice system handle campus sexual assault cases. (Gary Reyes/Associated Press)

The proposed changes also protect victims from having to come face to face with their alleged perpetrators in meetings unless they agree to do so.

Preventing the problem

Perhaps the most critical campus reforms, though, are those geared to preventing sexual violence in the first place.

To that end, Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Que., just rolled out new mandatory sexual-assault training for all first-year students during orientation. The university says it's also planning to offer the training to students in second, third and fourth years, as well as to faculty and staff.

Regehr says U of T has long had education programs in place, starting during orientation. But under its new policy, a panel of education experts will consult with the campus communities about whether these are working and also outline areas for improvement.

UBC's Nasiri says she'd like to see education around consent and healthy sexual relationships start at the elementary or high school level and hopes not to see a repeat of what happened at Stanford.

"The way that that case was handled is something that we take major issue with," she said. "No student body and no institution should allow for this kind of situation to arise again. We're doing our best to advocate for as much prevention as possible and to set a new standard for universities nationwide." 

Rape Bill Awaits CA Gov’s Signature as Stanford Rapist Gets Out of Jail Early

A combination booking photos shows former Stanford University student Brock Turner (L) on January 18, 2015 at the time of arrest and after Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious woman, in Santa Clara County Sheriff's booking photo (R). © Reuters

Brock Turner’s six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman is coming to an end three months early. The ex-Stanford swimmer’s light penalty provoked outrage and inspired California legislation now just one step away from becoming law.

Turner, 20, will likely be released from jail Friday having served only half of his six month sentence. Three months may be a short time to serve for sexual assault, but a lot has changed between when he was convicted and now.

Three months ago, Turner was found guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. On top of his brief jail time, Turner will spend the rest of his life on the sex offender registry and will have to complete a sex offender management program.

Although life on the sex offender registry is no one’s idea of fun, it is a far cry from what the prosecutors were originally seeking, which was a six-year sentence in federal prison.

While California has mandatory minimum sentencing laws for forcible rape, the same is not true for cases where the victim is unconscious or severely intoxicated – which is what allowed Turner to slink out of court with what was seen by many as a slap on the wrist.

But on Monday, state lawmakers passed legislation that would remove a judge’s ability to use discretion during sentencing of such crimes.

"Sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated victim is a terrible crime and our laws need to reflect that," Democratic Assemblyman Bill Dodd, a co-author of the legislation, said in statement.

He went on to say, “This bill is about more than sentencing, it’s about supporting victims and changing the culture on our college campuses to help prevent future crimes.”

The bill now moves to Governor Jerry Brown (D), but he has made no mention of whether or not he will sign it into law.

Turner’s sentence was cut short largely due to the fact that he had no prior run-ins with the law, which was also what inspired Judge Aaron Persky to give him a lean sentence, explaining that anything harsher might have a “severe impact” on Turner.

Persky also received a significant amount of backlash from the sentencing – so much so that he was transferred into civil court.