MOB RULE Can Not Be Allowed To Override the Decisions Of Our Courts
It “got” it. Regardless of the hysteria, the lies, the emotions and the mindless outrage over the lenient Brock Turner sentence, the LA Times recognized that the legacy of Stanford non-lawyer lawprof Michelle Dauber’s war against Judge Aaron Persky would be to strike fear in the hearts of judges should they show more mercy than the mob would allow. The problem is not what happened to Persky. The problem is how his recall will affect all the other California trial judges, some 1,500 of them, who now may be more likely to craft their sentencing decisions to take into account the degree to which an angry public wants the defendant punished.
Being California-centric, it focused only on its own judges. And indeed, the message was heard, loud and clear, throughout California. The idea of recall because a lawful sentence that fell short of the angry women’s demand for retribution would have seemed ridiculous before. That was no longer the case. But as bad as the Persky recall was, as damaging to the fabric of an independent judiciary, to the ability of judges to wield their authority without fear or favor, it wasn’t done yet. He’s off the bench, the recall won, but once the mob cranks up its outrage machine, it’s hard to stop. You can’t reason with the mob. The mob can’t reason with itself. If Persky was evil on the bench, then he’s evil off and must be destroyed. Hear that judges? It’s not just your robe at risk. It’s your life.
The effort to put into words why the removal of Persky as a JV tennis coach is irrational is hard. It’s doubly hard when it’s necessary to do so using language that won’t offend anyone and give rise to responsive cries of misogyny or rape apology. It’s not as if the LA Times can come out and say, openly and clearly, that the Dauber Gang are unhinged and disingenuous, a dangerous group of empowered morons who wield the most potent weapon of the day, accusations, with reckless abandon. And yet, the LA Times took an enormous risk, doing the best they could with the words they’re allowed, to call out the astoundingly crazy extension of guilt from Turner to Persky the judge, to Persky the person, as if Judge Persky would shrug off, or perhaps even enable, some rapist raping with rapey abandon the women on the JV team on the tennis court. It’s nuts. Completely bonkers. Utterly irrational. And the LA Times said so, as much as it could.
blog.simplejustice– Scott Greenfield
