CHICAGO– An Illinois judge who sparked outrage by overturning a man’s rape conviction involving a 16-year-old girl has been removed from the bench after a judicial oversight body found he skirted the law and committed guilty pleas to misconduct.
The Illinois Court Commission removed Adams County Judge Robert Adrian from the bench Friday after holding a three-day hearing in Chicago in November on a complaint filed against Adrian.
According to the decision, Adrian was “involved in multiple instances of misconduct” and “abused his position of power to satisfy his own sense of justice while circumventing the law.”
The commission could have issued a reprimand, censure or suspension without pay, but its decision said it had “sufficient grounds” to immediately remove Adrian from the bench in Adams County, western Illinois.
In October 2021, Adrian had found then 18-year-old Drew Clinton of Taylor, Michigan guilty of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl during a May 2021 graduation party.
The state Judicial Investigation Commission filed a complaint against Adrian after the judge dismissed Clinton’s conviction in January 2022, with the judge saying the 148 days Clinton spent in prison was sufficient punishment.
The complaint stated that Adrian admitted that he should have given Clinton the mandatory four-year prison sentence, but that he would not send him to prison. “That’s not fair,” Adrian said during the sentencing hearing, court transcripts show. “I won’t do that.”
Clinton was accused of sexually assaulting Cameron Vaughan. The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly.
Vaughan told The Associated Press in November, when she was 18, that Adrian’s reversal of Clinton’s sentence left her “completely shocked” but determined to oust the judge. She attended the committee meeting in November together with family, friends and sympathizers.
After Adrian dismissed Clinton’s conviction, Vaughan said the judge told the court, “This is what happens when parents allow teenagers to drink alcohol, swim in pools with their underwear on,” she said in a report that was supported by a court transcript. Hearing January 2022.
Adrian’s action sparked outrage in Vaughn’s hometown of Quincy, Illinois, and beyond, with the prosecutor in the case saying her “heart bleeds for the victim.”
Vaughan told the Chicago Tribune after Friday’s decision to remove Adrian that she was “very happy that the committee could see all the wrong and all the lies that he was telling all the time. I am so incredibly happy right now. He can’t hurt anyone else. He can’t ruin someone else’s life.”
When reached by phone Friday, Adrian told the Chicago Tribune that the commission’s decision to remove him “is completely a miscarriage of justice. I did what was right. I have always told the truth about it.”
Adams County court records show that Clinton’s guilty verdict was overturned because prosecutors failed to meet the burden of proof to prove Clinton guilty.
But in Friday’s decision, the commission wrote that it found Adrian’s contention that “he reversed his guilty finding based on his reconsideration of the evidence and his conclusion that the state had failed to prove that his case was a subterfuge was – the defendant’s attempt to justify the reversal. post hoc.”
Clinton cannot be tried again for the same crime under the Fifth Amendment. A motion to expunge Clinton’s record was denied in February 2023.