Illinois judge who reversed sexual assault ruling awaits fate after disciplinary hearing
Did a veteran judge in downstate Quincy who reversed his guilty ruling against a young man in a sexual assault case do so because he reconsidered the evidence and realized he was wrong?
Or, did he do it to get around a state law that would have forced him to send 18-year-old Drew Clinton to prison for at least four years?
Those two scenarios form the crux of the decision now before the seven-member Illinois Courts Commission, which on Wednesday concluded a rare hearing on whether 8th Judicial Circuit Judge Robert Adrian’s actions in the Clinton case amounted to judicial misconduct.
The Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, which investigates grievances against sitting judges, accused Adrian of circumventing the state’s mandatory sentencing law when he vacated his decision during Clinton’s Jan. 3, 2022, sentencing hearing. The board also accused Adrian of lying about his motives during sworn testimony last April as part of its investigation, and of ejecting from his courtroom a prosecutor who “liked” a social media post critical of Adrian.
Adrian defended his reversal, saying that his reevaluation of the evidence and testimony led him to conclude that an Adams County prosecutor “totally failed” to prove that Clinton was guilty of sexually assaulting Cameron Vaughan, then 16, after a May 2021 graduation party.
Removing prosecutor Josh Jones from his courtroom was done in anger amid a firestorm of controversy surrounding the case, said Adrian, who described Jones’ social media “like” as something that “hurt me greatly.”
“I don’t want to use that as an excuse, because what I did was inexcusable,” Adrian said about his treatment of Jones, whom he later called with an apology.
The two-day Courts Commission hearing in Chicago’s Michael A. Bilandic Building once again put Adrian in the same courtroom with Vaughan, who was not called to testify but attended with family and supporters. Now 18, Vaughan has been the subject of intense media attention following the case, agreeing to share her identity and story in local and national news as well as national television shows.
It could be weeks or months before the commission reaches its decision — its rules say only that it will come “within a reasonable time.” If the commission sides with the inquiry board, it could hand down a range of punishment from formal reprimand to removal from office.
Advocates say the outcome could have lasting repercussions for sexual assault survivors and other crime victims across the state.
“If you can have a judge that’s allowed to disregard the statutes passed by the General Assembly, any judge can,” said Megan Duesterhaus, chief executive officer of the Quincy Area Network Against Domestic Abuse, or QUANADA, who was at the commission hearing.
“I can’t imagine if I was in the situation of trying to report my sexual assault to police and I lived in Adams County, if that’s the kind of justice being offered, I’d have real hesitations to even report it. And I don’t blame survivors.”
Judge’s comments scrutinized
Much of the commission proceeding focused on Adrian’s comments made during the Jan. 3 sentencing hearing — comments that gutted the Vaughan family and stunned sexual assault advocates and survivors well beyond the downstate Illinois river town.
That hearing, according to a transcript, began with the judge listening to arguments on motions filed by Clinton’s defense attorney, Andrew Schnack, who first argued that the state’s mandatory sentencing range was unconstitutional and then that the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proof during the October 2021 bench trial in which Adrian found Clinton guilty on one of three felony counts of criminal sexual abuse.
Adrian then started his remarks by saying he considered the motions and arguments and was “required to do justice by the public … by me … by God.”
“It’s a mandatory sentence to the Department of Corrections,” he continued, noting that Clinton had just turned 18 years old prior to the accusations and had no previous criminal record.
“By law, the court is supposed to sentence this young man to the Department of Corrections,” he said, according to the 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.”
Adrian went on to say that he could find the sentencing unconstitutional, “but that’s not going to solve the problem” because that ruling would be reversed on appeal and Clinton would end up in prison.
“Mr. Clinton has served almost five months in the county jail, 148 days,” Adrian said at the January hearing. “For what happened in this case, that is plenty of punishment. That would be a just sentence. The court can’t do that. But what the court can do, because this was a bench trial, the court will find that the people failed to prove their case on count three.”
Michael Deno, the inquiry board’s executive director and general counsel, told commission members that Adrian’s own words during the sentencing hearing clearly show he reversed his ruling because he didn’t agree with the mandatory prison sentence.
“He doesn’t say one word about the facts or evidence of the case,” Deno told the commission, made up of state justices, judges and two appointed members of the public.
Deno also questioned why Adrian told the board that he chose not to explain his reasons for the reversal so he could save Vaughan from embarrassment. But, as Deno noted in the Jan. 3 transcript, the judge’s remarks included a lengthy admonishment of parents, adults and “the permissiveness and the lack of responsibility taken by everyone involved in this case.”
“This is what happened when parents do not exercise their parental responsibilities,” the judge said on Jan. 3, “when we have people, adults, having parties for teenagers, and they allow coeds and female people to swim in their underwear in their swimming pool. And, no, underwear is not the same as swimming suits.”
He continued: “It’s just — they allow 16-year-olds to bring liquor to a party. They provide liquor to underage people, and you wonder how these things happen. Well, that’s how these things happen. The court is totally disgusted with that whole thing.”
When asked to explain those statements to the commission, Adrian said he was not talking about Vaughan, who testified in the original trial that she swam in her underwear during the graduation party, got drunk and later, fell asleep on a friend’s couch. She said she woke up with a pillow pushed on her face and Clinton sexually assaulting her.
Adrian also said that the phrase “this is what happens” was not a reference to sexual assault or false allegations of sexual assault. Instead, he said he was talking about underage drinking at the party, the resulting danger of drunken driving and “myriad” other things.
“It wasn’t a DUI case,” Deno replied.
Adrian’s attorney, Daniel Konicek, argued that the judge wasn’t obligated to explain his decision that day in January, and Adrian chose to address the mandatory sentencing range in his remarks because it had been brought up by Clinton’s attorney and because the judge — who previously practiced law for nearly three decades before being elected to the bench in 2010 — saw an opportunity to comment on the broader issue of sending young offenders to prison.
“I understand I did not say it well,” Adrian said during his testimony before the commission. “Sometimes things don’t come out exactly the way you’d like them to.”
Post-trial meetings
The Judicial Inquiry Board also grilled Adrian on conversations he had with prosecutors and Clinton’s defense attorney shortly after the three-day bench trial concluded on Oct. 15, 2021.
That same afternoon, Adams County First Assistant State’s Attorney Todd Eyler said he saw Adrian while heading for lunch. The judge asked to speak to Eyler’s boss, State’s Attorney Gary Farha, about the way prosecutor Anita Rodriguez handled the Clinton case and another sex crimes case.
“You guys have to do something about Anita,” Adrian told Eyler, according to Eyler’s commission testimony.
The following Monday, Adrian again asked Eyler if Farha was in the office. After leaving the judge’s chambers, Eyler testified that he saw Adrian cross paths with Clinton’s attorney, Schnack, in the hallway. Both men said they needed to talk to each other, Eyler said.
That same day, Farha said he had a visit from Schnack, who told him Adrian wanted to talk about the Clinton case. Farha testified to the commission that he went to speak with Adrian and was asked if he would amend Clinton’s charge to something that allowed for probation.
Farha refused, he told commissioners, because he trusted Rodriguez, a veteran prosecutor that he assigned to handle sex crime cases for the office. It was evident, though, Farha testified, that Adrian didn’t want Clinton to go to prison.
Adrian told the commission that he considered probation as an option to avoid having to admit his mistake. But, he said, he realized “that would not be the proper approach” because he ultimately decided Clinton was innocent.
Adrian also faced questions about the timeline for his reevaluation. As he does with all his cases, Adrian said, he immediately started to wonder whether he made the right decision. Those questions intensified, he said, when Clinton’s attorney filed his motions on Oct. 19.
By the time of the Jan. 3 sentencing hearing, he said he was fairly certain he would reverse his ruling. But, Adrian said, he wanted to wait to hear each attorney’s arguments before making his final decision.
He also acknowledged that he reached his conclusion about Clinton’s innocence without looking at a transcript of the trial — which he never requested. And, as Deno told commissioners, he went into the sentencing hearing without a prepared statement or notes to help explain to the public why he changed his mind.
“It’s a lie,” Deno said of Adrian’s explanation. “It’s not a good lie because it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Konicek, Adrian’s attorney, said that while the judge’s comments during the Jan. 3 sentencing hearing were largely an attempt to point out the potential fault of mandatory sentencing laws, Adrian’s eventual decision was rooted in the evidence and his “obligation” to fix his error. Adrian reconsidered the testimony, some of which he found inconsistent, as well as the absence of certain bodily fluids during expert testing, and concluded that Clinton was innocent, Konicek told the commission.
After the commission hearing, Duesterhaus, the executive director of QUANADA, said the judge’s stated reasoning for reversing his decision showed he and his attorney “don’t understand the dynamics of sexual violence.”
That type of violence is about control, she said, not sexual gratification, and as such, the absence of bodily fluids does not mean a crime didn’t happen. And the trauma inflicted on the victim’s brain can cause them to remember parts of the assault differently, or not at all.
“I had the same opinion that I came in with, and that is that Bob Adrian does not have the temperament to be on the bench,” Duesterhaus said. “He has caused grievous harm to a survivor that he has not apologized for. I think that the whole trial with the respondent’s defense the past two days completely wrote the victim out of the script and has tried to flip the script to feel sorry and have sympathy for the judge who was doing his job and then faced criticism. I don’t have sympathy for that.”
Adrian told reporters outside the courtroom: “The only comment I will make is God requires three things of all people: That you do justice. That you love mercy, and you walk humbly with your God. And that’s what I’ve always tried to do, and that’s what I’ll always try to do.”
As for Vaughan, she said the hearing resurfaced feelings of anger and frustration. At one point, she said she asked her mom, “When did I become on trial again?”
She said she was hopeful the commission would remove Adrian from the bench.
“He doesn’t deserve to hold that power over people,” she said. “He has no idea how to be a judge.”
For information about rape crisis centers in Illinois, visit the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault website at icasa.org.
