Adams County, IL is a small county in Western, IL. A judge there, Robert Adrian, will no longer be known as “The Honorable” after he was removed from the bench by the Illinois Courts Commission.
Yes, it was the same Commission that apparently couldn’t find anything improper about our two newest Illinois Supreme Court justices ruling on a case where most of the named defendants gave them millions of dollars, either directly or in-kind, to their campaigns a few months before.
In Mr. Adrian’s case, the commission felt his actions in a sexual assault case constituted misconduct. The victim in that case, Cameron Vaughn, went public after what she and her family perceived as a miscarriage of justice.
She worked hard to get the judge removed. And against long odds, she succeeded.
Here’s a story from the local news outlet, Muddy River News:
QUINCY — A protest of Judge Robert Adrian’s ruling in January in the criminal sexual assault case against Drew Clinton has been scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Thursday at Washington Park.
Scheduled to attend are Carrie Ward, chief executive officer of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault; Megan Duesterhaus-AuBuchon, executive director of the Quincy Area Network Against Domestic Abuse (QUANADA); Cameron Vaughan, who testified about her experience in the case against Clinton; and Scott Vaughan, Cameron’s father.
After finding 18-year-old Clinton guilty of one count of criminal sexual assault during a bench trial on Oct. 15, Adrian changed his mind at Clinton’s sentencing hearing on Jan. 3 and declared him not guilty. Adrian said the 148 days Clinton served in the Adams County Jail was “plenty of punishment” and released him from custody.
148 days in jail then an acquittal? For raping a 16-year-old girl? That’s “plenty of punishment”? I betcha if Adrian’s daughter was the young lady under that football player, he wouldn’t think that.
Drew Clinton is probably lucky to still be breathing oxygen.
From ABC7 Chicago.
CHICAGO — An Illinois judge who sparked outrage by reversing a man’s rape conviction involving a 16-year-old girl has been removed from the bench after a judicial oversight body found he circumvented the law and engaged in misconduct.
The Illinois Courts Commission removed Adams County Judge Robert Adrian from the bench Friday after it held a three-day hearing in Chicago in November on a compliant filed against Adrian.
Its decision says Adrian “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 could have issued a reprimand, censure or suspension without pay, but its decision said it had “ample grounds” for immediately removing Adrian from the bench in western Illinois’ Adams County.
In October 2021, Adrian had found then 18-year-old Drew Clinton of Taylor, Michigan, guilty of sexual assaulting a 16-year-old girl during a May 2021 graduation party.
The state Judicial Inquiry Board filed a complaint against Adrian after the judge threw out Clinton’s conviction in January 2022, with the judge saying that the 148 days Clinton had spent in jail was punishment enough.
It seems as though the judge engaged in some victim blaming. You know, the “she wore a skirt that was too short and that’s why she got raped” line of thinking.
After Adrian threw out Clinton’s conviction, Vaughan said that the judge told the court “this is what happens whenever parents allow teenagers to drink alcohol, to swim in pools with their undergarments on,” she recounted in an account supported by a court transcript of the January 2022 hearing.
If true, maybe the judge should apply for jurist gigs in Iran or Afghanistan.
As for Mr. Drew: a decent and honorable young man would have covered up the girl with a blanket and kept his pants on. Or called her parents. Instead of trying to have sex with an unconscious girl.
And regardless, maybe the Commission needs to take another look at Justices Rochford and O’Brien.
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