![]() That debate inspired two political scientists, Sanford C. Such reluctance would breed more punitiveness and harm Black and Latino defendants, who are severely overrepresented in the criminal-justice system. She said, at the time, “I’m opposed to it because I believe this recall is terrible for racial justice.” She and others believed that it would make judges less independent and, in particular, more afraid to be lenient. The retired judge LaDoris Cordell, a feminist who, in the nineteen-eighties, became the first Black woman judge appointed in Northern California and, later, an elected superior-court judge in the same county as Persky, participated in a campaign against the recall. ![]() The anti-Persky campaign also drew liberal critics, who anticipated that a movement to remove a judge for being insufficiently punitive in a criminal case would bring troubling unintended consequences. As Dauber wrote in the Washington Post, “It is the very fact that judges like Persky often exercise ‘discretion’ in favor of defendants like Brock Turner that preserves a system in which poor and minority defendants receive long sentences.” In an e-mail to me, Dauber added, “The fact that Turner’s victim was an Asian-American woman of color made refuting the Persky campaign’s spreading of rape myths and falsehoods even more important, given that research indicates survivors of color may be less likely to be believed.” Dauber said, at the time, “We voted that sexual violence, including campus sexual violence, must be taken seriously by our elected officials, and by the justice system.” The precepts of Black Lives Matter, too, seemed to support the campaign, insofar as mercy shown to a privileged, white male Stanford student appeared to be an instance of racially disparate treatment. He was successfully recalled, in 2018, by a wide margin. But the emergence of the #MeToo movement spelled doom for Judge Persky. No attempt to recall a trial judge had even made it on the ballot anywhere in the country since 1982, and no California judge had been recalled since 1932. Soon afterward, Michele Dauber, a professor at Stanford Law School, launched a campaign to remove Persky, an elected trial judge, from his job, through a recall election. The Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, Aaron Persky, sentenced Turner to six months in jail, three years of probation, and lifetime sex-offender registration, saying that a longer prison term “would have a severe impact on him.” (The maximum sentence that Turner could have received was fourteen years in prison.) The leniency of the sentence, along with Doe’s viral statement, ignited widespread fury. ![]() At Turner’s sentencing hearing, the woman, known in court proceedings as Emily Doe, read a victim-impact statement that addressed him directly: “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside of me, and that’s why we’re here today.” BuzzFeed published the entire statement, which went viral. Two passersby saw the nineteen-year-old freshman thrusting upon an immobile, partially unclothed woman, next to a dumpster, and restrained him while they called the police. In 2016, Brock Turner, a former swimmer at Stanford University, was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside of a fraternity party.
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