When California judge Aaron Persky let Brock Turner off with a six-month sentence, Persky should have lost his job. And so he did. Two years after delivering his controversial soft-on-crime sentence, the Santa Clara County Superior Court judge was recalled by voters.
Persky had become famous for imposing a minimal sentence on Turner, a Stanford student who sexually assaulted 22-year-old Chanel Miller behind a dumpster in Palo Alto, California. Part of Persky’s stated rationale was that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact” on Turner. Miller’s concerns, and those of future victims of sexual assault, went conspicuously unaddressed.
It makes sense that Persky would lose a position for which he was manifestly unfit. But it makes no sense to argue that Persky should never again be able to find work.
After the New York Post reported last week that Persky had been hired as a high school girls’ tennis coach, backlash developed in the form of a Change.org petition, and Lynbrook High School in San Jose promptly fired him. The petition argued that by hiring Persky to coach the junior varsity girls tennis team, the high school would send a message that it didn’t value the trauma undergone by Miller and others.
But expelling Persky from a job that has nothing to do with the judiciary sets a dangerous precedent, and it’s scarily evocative of mob rule. Even the Los Angeles Times editorial board argued as much last week:
Persky’s firing isn’t justice; at best, it’s a cowardly concession to a digital lynch mob. At worst, it’s revenge. It says that Persky must be punished forever for his error. Not only must he be purged from public life, but he mustn’t inhabit any other pocket of society, either. The editorial board continued:
Persky may have been unfit as a judge, but he should not be declared unfit to function elsewhere, to exist as a normal human being with a chance to mend his ways. His firing shows how one high school, rather than facing up to its own decision, surrendered to an online mob. It also sets an alarming precedent, one that says there be repercussions for your misdeeds and afterward, there will be no redemption.
