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An Illinois judge has been tossed off the bench after reversing a teen’s sexual assault conviction for raping a sleeping girl in 2021.
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Adams County Judge Robert Adrian was removed by the Illinois Courts Commission on Friday after a three-day hearing in Chicago last November following a complaint against him, according to the Daily Mail.
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The state’s Judicial Inquiry Board filed a complaint against Adrian after he threw out the conviction of Drew Clinton of Taylor, Mich., after the then-18-year-old had served 148 days behind bars. Adrian had convicted Clinton of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Cameron Vaughan during a grad party in October 2021, but reversed the decision a few months later during his sentencing, saying the boy had served “plenty” of time.
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In its decision to remove Adrian, the courts commission said the judge had “engaged in multiple instances of misconduct” and “abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law.” The commission said it had “ample grounds” to remove Adrian from the bench rather than imposing a lesser punishment.
Adrian was required by state law to sentence Clinton to a minimum of four years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, but circumvented that by reversing the guilty verdict.
“He has no prior record, none whatsoever,” Adrian said at the time. “By law, the court is supposed to sentence this young man to the Department of Corrections … This court will not do that. That is not just. There is no way for what happened in this case that this teenager should go to the Department of Corrections. I will not do that.”
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Vaughan — who waived her right to anonymity, according to the Daily Mail — said she had been drinking during the grad party and passed out in the basement. She said she woke up to find Clinton sexually assaulting her and holding a pillow over her face.
Clinton claimed it was consensual sex and she was not as drunk as she testified. He cannot be re-tried for the same crime.
Vaughan told the Chicago Tribune that she was “unbelievably happy” with the decision to remove Adrian from the bench.
“He can´t hurt anybody else,” she told the Tribune. “He can’t ruin anyone else’s life.”
Adrian, meanwhile, called the commission’s decision “totally a miscarriage of justice. I did what was right. I’ve always told the truth about it.”
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