The Illinois judge who sparked outrage after reversing a sex offender’s conviction has been reassigned.
According to the Quincy Herald-Whig newspaper, on Thursday Adams County Judge Robert Adrian was removed from presiding criminal cases and reassigned to civil cases — including small claims, legal matters and probate dockets.
Adrian first made headlines earlier this month, after he overturned the conviction of 18-year-old Drew Clinton, who had been found guilty in the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl last year.
According to court documents, the teenager said that she was sexually assaulted after becoming intoxicated at a party on May 30.
She said that she became unconscious after drinking alcohol and swimming in a pool at the party. When she later woke up she said she had a pillow covering her face while Clinton was assaulting her.
In October 2021, after a three-day bench trial, the judge found Clinton guilty on one count of criminal sexual assault, which would carry a minimum sentence of four years.
But on Jan 3., when Clinton appeared for sentencing, the judge tossed the conviction and seemed to shift the blame to others.
“This is what’s happened when parents do not exercise their parental responsibilities, 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,” Adrian said, according to the transcript. “It’s just — they allow 16-year-old to bring liquor to a party. They provide liquor to underage people, and you wonder how these things happen,” he added. “Well, that’s how these things happen. The Court is totally disgusted with that whole thing.”
He also said that the minimum sentence was “not just,” according to the transcript.
“There is no way for what happened in this case that this teenager should go to the Department of Corrections,” he said. “I will not do that.”
Speaking to local station WGEM-TV the victim later said that the judge “made me seem like I fought for nothing and that I put my word out there for no reason.”
She added that after hearing the judge’s decision, she “immediately had to leave the courtroom and go to the bathroom. I was crying.”
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