The Illinois judge who reversed a teen’s sexual assault conviction in a shock move that sparked nationwide outrage has been expelled from the bench.
Robert Adrian will no longer serve as a judge after the seven-member Illinois Court Commission removed him from the bench Friday for reversing the conviction of Drew Clinton, then 18, at his January 2022 sentencing hearing.
Adrian had found Clinton guilty of sexually assaulting Cameron Vaughan, then 16, while she was unconscious at a 2021 graduation party.
However, when it came time to sentence the convicted sexual predator, the judge had a sudden change of heart. Adrian testified that he felt Clinton – having already served nearly five months in county jail while his case worked its way through the court system – already served his punishment.
But the judge was not following the law, which states that the conviction carries a mandatory sentence of at least four years and he would be required to impose the term.
In order “to circumvent the law,” Adrian decided his only option was to reconsider his previous verdict and find Clinton not guilty, according to the commission’s report detailing its decision to expel the veteran judge.
After providing options that were “not going to solve the problem” of having to send the teen to prison, Adrian said at the sentencing, that the prosecutors “failed to prove their case.”
The shocking move outraged advocates against sexual violence as well as Vaughan and her family. It moved the distraught teenager to go public with her story after she felt the justice system failed her.
“I woke up at my friend’s place with a pillow over my face so I couldn’t be heard and Drew Clinton inside of me,” Vaughan said at the time, WGEM reported.
“I asked him to stop multiple times and he wouldn’t. I finally got off the couch and pushed him off of me and he jumped up and just started playing video games as if nothing had happened,” she said.
An online petition to remove the judge brought in more than 170,000 signatures.
The commission found that Adrian “reversed his guilty finding to intentionally circumvent the mandatory prison term he was required to impose upon Clinton.”
It added that the judge — who was removed from handling criminal cases the week after the reversal — did not believe that Clinton was innocent but that he believed the sexual assault he committed as a teenager with no prior criminal history did not warrant prison time. His claim that the state had failed to prove its case was a “subterfuge,” according to the commission.
“[Adrian] misused his position as a judge in a criminal case to satisfy his own sense of justice by refusing to faithfully apply the law,” the commission wrote in its findings.
The panel also found Adrian guilty of lying about his motives for the verdict reversal under sworn testimony during the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board’s investigation into the matter.
The commission also found that he improperly removed a prosecutor from his courtroom who “liked” a social media post that was critical of Adrian in a form of retaliation.
“Such intentional, dishonest, and extensive misconduct demonstrates [Adrian’s] utter disregard for the truth, the judiciary, and our justice system,” the commission wrote in its decision, adding that his misconduct “seriously damaged the integrity of the judiciary.”
Adrian is only the fourth judge the commission has removed from the bench since 2003, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The ex-judge defended his record when reached by the Tribune Friday.
“It’s totally a miscarriage of justice,” he said of his removal. “I did what was right. I’ve always told the truth about it.”
Meanwhile, Clinton’s victim said she was thrilled by the decision.
Vaughan told the local newspaper that she was “very happy that the commission could see all the wrong and all the lies that he told the entire time. I’m so unbelievably happy right now. He can’t hurt anybody else. He can’t ruin anyone else’s life.”
Clinton cannot be retried for the same crime under the Fifth Amendment. A request to expunge his record was denied in February 2023.
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Allie Griffin
