Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was on his way to being voted out of office Tuesday, two years after he set off national outrage by sentencing a Stanford athlete to six months in jail for sexually assaulting and attempting to rape an unconscious woman.
With 39 percent of precincts reporting, 59 percent of the county’s voters favored recalling Persky and 41 percent opposed the recall. On the same ballot, Assistant District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson led civil rights lawyer Angela Storey, 71 to 29 percent, in the election to serve the last four years of Persky’s term.
Henderson, like Persky a Stanford graduate, has been a Santa Clara County prosecutor since 1995 and has taught classes in prosecuting elder abuse. She supported the recall and was endorsed by the campaign’s organizer.
Takeaway: Persky, a judge for 15 years, is the first California jurist to be recalled since 1932.
“This is a sad day for the California judiciary,” said LaDoris Cordell, a former Santa Clara County judge who was active in the campaign against the recall. She said the vote sent a message to judges that “if they don’t go along with popular opinion ... they can lose their job.”
Organizers of the recall were not immediately available for comment
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