Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/06/california-voters-fire-the-jud.html
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Indeed! Excellent work Californians!
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Hey, maybe former judge Persky now has some free time to try and get a swimming scholarship so he can go back to college and take some ethics and moral philosophy courses…
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Writing for Vox, a public defender named Rachel Marshall argues that the recall sets a bad precedent
I understand her argument, but in Persky’s case he was canned by the public that elected him because it was convincingly demonstrated that he had a pattern of overly lenient sentencing for white male defendants like the rapist Brock Turner.
If Marshall doesn’t want judges recalled, she should oppose their being elected in the first place. In a case like Persky’s it’s hard to fault the public for taking his place on the bench away using the same tool with which they granted it to him.
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Fuck yeah!
Also, @doctorow this keeps getting repeated in the news I see:
This is the first time a California judge was recalled in 87 years.
What about Chief Justice Rose Bird, recalled by the voters in 1986 by the California voters?
UPDATE: I wrote to Bob Egelko of the SF Chron who was one of the reporters making the same claim Cory did, and I learned that 1986 wasn’t a “recall” election, but was simply a failure to reelect Bird to another term. So indeed a judicial recall vote hasn’t happened in a spell. I’m happily better informed!
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Considering how many districts continued to fuck themselves over yesterday, we have to get something right.
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Yeah, see, here’s the thing. I don’t see why this defendant was deserving of mercy. He raped an unconscious woman in an alley next to a dumpster.
I would bet that if you look through the records on this judges’ past rulings, he has sentenced people who shoplifted to serve more time than this white-privileged rapist.
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Adios mofo, and don’t let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out.
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The Rebel State of California thanks you for your support!
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Six months is an eternity when you’re used to getting away with murder. Cruel and unusual!
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You mean this Brock Turner?
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Thank you, I was trying to remember her name. Looks like the first time in 32 years.
And Rachel Marshall seems to be an idiot. She is worried that public opinion might sway a judge’s sentencing. Uh, that’s called “We the People”. Try reading the preamble to the Constitution, Rachel. The People are SUPPOSED to get their way.
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Yep; that asshole rapist.
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uh, no. There’s a reason we have courts that aren’t kangaroo courts.
I empathize with the public defender here, because the question is whether the message judges take from this will be “I should apply mercy to people more deserving of it” or “mercy gets you fired”. And I don’t have a ton of faith in people learning the right lesson
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Right? It’s like Marshall is using Persky as the example of why judges in general should not be elected. Poor judgement on her part.
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I’m very torn on this. Having judges appointed isn’t exactly a great thing, either.
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It wasn’t showing ‘mercy’ that got him canned, it was cronyism with a healthy dose of passive misogyny.
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There’s no perfect way to get an independent judiciary. Executive branch nomination and legislative branch approval seems to get the best results, but it would gum up the works for the legislature. Perhaps an elected commission could take on that duty from legislators.
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I voted in this election. I voted for the recall. I think I regret it.
People who are quick to point out his leniency for white male defendants miss the bigger picture that he was lenient overall, including for minority defendants, favoring rehabilitation over imprisonment.
At a time when we decry the overly harsh American legal system that goes for punishment rather than rehabilitation, the amount of money we waste in the prison system, and the power of the prison-industrial complex, I realize I better empathize Persky’s approach, even if it was tone-deaf in this particular case.
Anyhow, I’m at least glad that Persky is being replaced by a woman, prosecutor Cindy Hendrickson.
And to be clear, I absolutely agree that the rapist Brock “The Rapist” Turner is an unrepentant piece of shit coming from an unrepentant community who deserves way more than the 6 months he got, and this case was a poster-child example of the American “Rape Culture” problem. I look forward to his retrial coming on June 28th.
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