Holy fuck the liar is trying to take the moral high ground argument.
How’s your support for the GOP in that light you’re trying to shine?
Surely a happy judicial medium exists between coddling the wealthy and oppressing the poor.
The Law already has a disproportionate effect on poor and minority populations. If you want to address that - then advance your ideas to do so. Letting the judge off the hook for refusing to hold well-off white Ivy League racists accountable actually does nothing to address the fundamental failure of justice.
Scaremongering to the effect that we shouldn’t discipline a judge who lets rich white Ivy League boys get away with rape because because maybe some random other judges might be even harder on the poors sounds more like excuses for maintaining the status quo.
In short, I find your - or whoever’s - argument to be dishonest and irrelevant.
I’m not particularly moved by slippery slope arguments. If you - or those people whose arguments you are bandying - come back in a few years and demonstrate that yes - judges are now being harder on poor and minority defendants, while continuing to allow wealthy white male Stanfordians to escape punishment, then we can re-address that problem. Possibly we’ll address it by firing a few more judges!
But it’s no argument for allowing Persky to continue after the people of California have lost confidence in his judgement.
Sorry - “well-off white Ivy League racists” should have been “well-off white Ivy League rapists” in the first para.
Meh, probably right on both counts. 
And if you really want to be nitpicky, Stanford is not an Ivy League school.
I didn’t get to vote in this recall, but I’m the next county over and heard much of the discussion. None of it was about judges being too lenient on crime in general. In fact, in 2012 California limited the 3 strikes law to apply only to felonies for the third strike, which made things somewhat more lenient.
This was all about sex crimes not being treated seriously enough, especially when the assailant was a “good boy.”
If this means harsher penalties for sex criminals of any race, fine with me, but I suspect the poorer ones don’t get off that easily right now.
Shhh, don’t let them hear you say that!
That’s how people perceive the judge’s thought process, and the media aren’t helping matters in their biased and sensational reporting. When you look at the facts of the case, however, what’s probably a more accurate characterization is simply to say that Turner did not have any previous criminal convictions. That’s not a judge or the parole board saying “He’s a good white boy, leave him alone.” That’s something that judges in every criminal case across the land routinely take into consideration.
There are inconvenient facts in this case, such as the fact that both Turner and the victim herself had blood alcohol levels that were way beyond the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle. Authorities estimate that the victim’s were approaching .20, which is seriously drunk. I want to be clear: in no way does that justify sexual assault, which I believe Turner committed. But what I would say is that it’s a mitigating factor. That’s not just my opinion but apparently the opinion of the parole board and the judge. I get that there’s outrage, but parole boards and judges have probably seen hundreds, if not thousands, of sexual assault cases of all types, to varying degrees.
In my view, the parole board made a mistake. They made a recommendation for sentencing that was too lenient. The judge’s error was in adopting the parole board’s lenient recommendation. I may be wrong, but I think what Bricker is trying to get across to you is that there are unintended consequences when you encourage judges to ignore the recommendations of parole boards. And there are unintended consequences when you encourage judges to think more about being too soft on crime when what they should be doing is making impartial decisions based on established legal doctrine and guidelines.
We all know about unintended consequences: for instance, getting recalled is an unintended consequence of the judge following the PB rec.
It is indeed, but show me the evidence that the judge acted illegally or even unethically. I get that he #metoo’s a thing and people want to cut Brock Turner’s dick off - hell I do, too, if I’m being honest. But firing a judge who followed the guidelines of a parole board and who has otherwise adjudicated without controversy for more than a decade might have repercussions that aren’t obvious now. This is nothing more than mob rule, and the rule of the mob is always, always, always more dangerous than the occasional example of misrule by a local judge. Even without elections, judges can be impeached for misconduct. Conversely, there is no impeaching a mob.
You’re ignoring the judge’s subsequent doubling down, which said nothing about the parole board or recommended sentencing, and his doubling down on that with his petulant attitude toward the recall.
If he HAD apologized or indicated some remorse for the sentence, he probably would not have been recalled.
The public doesn’t need another outlet because they already have one…a recall vote. Every judge should have, in the back of their mind, the fact that they can be removed if they fail to serve the public interest. That’s not a chilling effect.
You’re glossing over the other outlet the public has: voting “no” to the recall. The public didn’t have to vote to fire the judge. They chose that, intentionally and most likely with great public debate, consideration, and reflection. You don’t dislike that there’s a recall power. You dislike that a judge got recalled, when you don’t think he deserved it. Problem is, 60% of people disagree with your decision.
The only message this sends les autres is that when making judgments, they’d better consider what 51% of the people want.
Your opinion assumes that he should feel remorse, as though the judge perpetrated a crime or behaved unethically. I know he rendered a judgment that many people did not like, but show me where he acted unethically and illegally. Again, “doubling down”…for fucks sake, he wasn’t trying to goad anyone; he was saying that if he had been presented with the same sets of facts, with the same recommendations from the parole board, it’s probable that, as a legal expert, he would have rendered the same decision.
But #metoo.
Here’s the reality. In recall votes, people who are motivated to get off their ass and vote, are the ones who decide.
And while we’re at it, here’s a tip: maybe the average voter in a country that elected Donald Trump for president isn’t really qualified to determine who’s a qualified jurist and who isn’t. Maybe electing judges, particularly in our anti-intellectual society, is just a bad idea. Having a recall is mob rule and mob justice, which is an even worse idea.
Sorry bro, but mob rule is going to backfire and for all the shit kicking on this thread about the disparities between rich white defendants and poor brown ones, I can pretty much god damn guarantee you that more poor brown defendants, along with perhaps a few more rich white ones, are going to be drowned by the criminal justice system by judges who are too afraid to adjudicate based on established norms or jurisprudence and defer instead to their fears of how they’re going to be portrayed on Facebook.
No one here has claimed his actions were illegal or unethical. If that had been the case, there were other remedies available. The judicial review board found, correctly, that his actions weren’t within the scope that they could act on.
He demonstrated poor judgement, that while completely legal, substantially undermined the confidence of the people who elected him in the first place. He further compounded his problem by being completely unapologetic when called out on it. You can admire him for standing by his decision and not saying what the people wanted to hear to restore their confidence, but the captain that goes down with his ship is still fish food.
Bottom line, there is a remedy for judges acting illegally or unethically and another option for judges who have lost the confidence of their electorate. This was completely and correctly the latter.
Are judges going to start handing out harsh sentences for fear of being recalled? I’d bet good money against it. Are judges going to consider whether they can reasonably defend a lenient sentence? That’s my ideal outcome on this.
And, as I said above, that is what the law ultimately is. It’s not some institution that is somehow above democracy. The law is just the codified will of the people.
The law also had a procedure built in that allowed for a recall. So the will of the people in this IS THE LAW.
That’s why I say this is a false dilemma. Allegiance to the law (in this case, at least*) is allegiance to the will of the people.
This recall shows that judges are not above the law–both the newly passed law and the law that allows for recalls.
*Court cases make this more complicated, since the law needs to be interpreted. And anti-democratic tactics can make it where the law does not agree with what the people want. But, in this case, it aligns.
…if you don’t trust the people to be able to make decisions like this: then the only remedy is to remove the option to recall. Is that the outcome you are hoping for?
People seem to be forgetting that the Judge had two recommendations available to him: the probation department (not parole) and the prosecutor. (Additionally, he could have chosen to sentence anywhere in between them.) He chose to go with the very lenient one, to the outrage of the public, and paid the price for that. Had he just ‘split the difference’ and given a 3-year sentence, most of us never would have heard of this case.
After I figure out a solution to the more prevalent problem of space aliens using too many airport landing and takeoff windows, I’ll devote some thought to the matter of excessive judicial leniency toward poor and minority population.