Daywatch: Hearing to decide judge’s fate after sexual assault verdict
Good morning, Chicago.
Cameron Vaughan thought the worst was behind her.
The 16-year-old had already told her parents what happened that night in June 2021, and then recounted each excruciating memory to the sexual assault nurses, the Quincy police detectives and Adams County prosecutors. She already endured the three-day bench trial, the questions and comments and the looks aimed at making her feel like she was lying. Like it was her fault.
She told herself it had all been worth it when, four months later, she heard 8th Judicial Circuit Judge Robert Adrian say he found her accused attacker, 18-year-old Drew Clinton, guilty of one felony count of criminal sexual assault.
All that remained was the sentencing hearing.
“I was so ready to see him finally get what he deserved,” said Vaughan, now 18, who agreed to be identified for this story.
Instead, in a decision that gutted the Vaughan family and stunned sexual assault advocates and survivors well beyond the downstate Illinois river town, Adrian reversed his guilty verdict, saying that the 148 days Clinton spent in county jail was “plenty of punishment.”
“By law, the court is supposed to sentence this young man to the Department of Corrections,” Adrian told the courtroom, according to a hearing transcript. “This court will not do that. That is not just. There is no way for what happened in this case that this teenager should go to the Department of Corrections. I will not do that.”
Now, nearly two years later, the Illinois Courts Commission will convene today in a Chicago courtroom for a rare hearing on whether the veteran judge should face discipline for his actions.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Jonathan Bullington.
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