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A Change.org petition to remove Judge Aaron Persky had thousands of signatures by Monday evening. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky(Photo: Jason Doiy, AP)
A California judge is drawing outrage and recall buzz after<span style="color: Red;">*</span>sentencing a former Stanford University swim team member convicted of three felony sex abuse counts to just six months in county jail.
More than 250,000 people have signed a
Change.org online petition demanding Judge Aaron Persky be recalled, and a Stanford law professor has started a recall<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
website.
Brock Turner, 20, was found guilty in March of three counts of sexual assault for the attack on an unconscious<span style="color: Red;">*</span>woman<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in January 2015. He was arrested after two graduate students on bicycles rode up as the assault was taking place near a trash bin, shouted and<span style="color: Red;">*</span>then<span style="color: Red;">*</span>tackled Turner when he fled.
Turner could have faced more than a decade<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in prison. At the sentencing hearing last week, the 23-year-old victim read an emotional letter detailing what she remembered of the horror, including taking a shower at the hospital after the attack.
"I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don't want my body anymore. I was terrified of it, I didn't know what had been in it, if it had been contaminated, who had touched it," she said. "I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else."
Turner's father, Dan Turner, countered that his son's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>life "will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life."
Prosecutors sought six years for Turner, while the defense sought a four-month sentence. Probation officials suggested six months. Persky<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>citing Turner's age, the fact that he was drunk and thus bore "less moral culpability," and the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>lack of "significant" prior legal problems<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>issued a six-month sentence, which includes three years of probation.
Attempts by USA TODAY to contact the judge were not successful.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he does not support efforts to remove Persky from his post, but<span style="color: Red;">*</span>blasted the ruling.
“The predatory offender has failed to take responsibility, failed to show remorse and failed to tell the truth," Rosen said. "The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim’s ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape.”
The ruling drew outrage from many in the Stanford community and across the nation. The change.org petition calls Persky's ruling a "travesty of justice" and seeks his removal from office.
"Judge Persky failed to see that the fact that Brock Turner is a white male star athlete at a prestigious university does not entitle him to leniency," the petition reads. "He also failed to send the message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class, race, gender or other factors."
Stanford distanced itself from the controversy, saying in a statement that the school<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"did everything within its power to assure that justice was served in this case."
Stanford law professor Michele Dauber is on a committee seeking to recall<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Persky, an elected judge.
"Sitting in that courtroom was like a trip to the Middle Ages. Do we still burn witches?," she tweeted.
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