The Stanford Sexual-Assault Judge Is Now Facing Calls for a Misconduct Investigation

He also gains some high-profile defenders.

Jason Doiy/The Recorder via AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A dozen California state lawmakers are calling for Judge Aaron Persky to be investigated for misconduct, and for prosecutors to seek a review of the six-month sentence Persky gave last week to Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of three sexual-assault felonies.

The lawmakers, including members of the women’s caucus and legislators from districts near Stanford, asked the state’s Commission on Judicial Performance to investigate Persky for the sentencing decision. In a separate letter, they also called on Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen to seek a review of the sentence by another judge, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“A prison sentence should have a severe impact upon a rapist,” the legislators wrote. “Instead, the extremely and inappropriately lenient grant of probation means that Turner likely will spend just weeks behind bars.”

As Persky faces a potential investigation and petition calling for a recall election, some high-profile members of the legal community have also begun publicly defending the judge, arguing that public outcry over one unpopular decision should not be enough to remove a judge from the bench.

Writing in the New York Times, law professor Paul Butler said a recall election would cause judges to think about how popular their decisions would be with the public. “This would inevitably lead to harsher punishment,” Butler wrote. “The people who would suffer most from this punitiveness would not be white boys at frat parties.”

Santa Clara County Public Defender Molly O’Neal said the sentence was “totally fair” given Turner’s lack of a criminal record. Rosen, the district attorney, said in a statement Monday that he disagreed with the sentence but did not believe Persky should lose his gavel.

Turner is expected to serve three months in county jail because it’s anticipated he will be released early on good behavior. He will be required to register as a sex offender. When Turner was sentenced, Persky explained that more time behind bars would have an “extreme impact” on the young man. The judge cited Turner’s age, 20, and clean record as “unusual circumstances” that influenced his decision to not sentence Turner to the mandatory minimum of two years in state prison.

In their letter, the lawmakers said Turner’s sentence is “perceived by the public to be based on the fact that Turner is an upper middle class, white student-athlete who was privileged enough to earn both admission and an athletic scholarship to a highly selective university, just as Judge Persky did himself.”

Persky, a former sex-crimes prosecutor who also graduated from Stanford, has served on the Santa Clara County Superior Court since 2003. He also faced criticism during a 2011 gang rape lawsuit, when he allowed defendants to submit Facebook photos of the plaintiff in a garter belt as evidence that she did not suffer emotional damage or post-traumatic stress disorder after the alleged gang rape, according to the Mercury News.

But the reaction to the Turner case has been exponentially worse, with 10 prospective jurors excused from a jury this week in an unrelated trial that Persky was presiding over. The jurors who were excused said they were upset how the judge ruled in Turner’s case. Meanwhile, a petition to recall Persky has reached its goal of 1 million signatures and is expected to be delivered to the Commission on Judicial Performance on Friday, the Chronicle reported.

The agency is responsible for investigating complaints of judicial misconduct and can take several measures to discipline judges, including removing them from office.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate