Illinois judge removed from bench after reversing man's rape conviction for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl

An Illinois judge has been removed from the bench after he reversed a teenager's sexual assault conviction for raping a 16-year-old while she was asleep, according to the Daily Mail.

Adams County Judge Robert Adrian was yanked off the bench after a three-day hearing was held in Chicago due to a complaint that was lodged against him. Adrian originally found then-18-year-old Drew Clinton guilty of sexually assaulting 16-year-old Cameron Vaughan during a graduation party in 2021.

However, when it was time to sentence Clinton, Adrian said that the boy had already spent 148 days behind bars. The report noted that while Adrian could not sentence the teen to time served, he was able to overturn the verdict and set him free, per ABC News.

Following the decision, the court commission decided that Adrian had "engaged in multiple instances of misconduct" and that he had "abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law."

As a result, the state Judicial Inquiry Board lodged a complaint against Adrian after he threw out Clinton's conviction in January 2022.

Cameron, who is now 18 years old, said she passed out drunk in the basement and awoke to find Clinton sexually assaulting her while holding a pillow over her face. However, Clinton insists that the two had consensual sex and that Cameron was not as drunk as she claimed.

At the time, Adrian said: "He [Clinton] has no prior record, none whatsoever. By law, the court is supposed to sentence this young man to the Department of Corrections. ... 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."

Even though he has been removed from the bench, Adrian insists that he did the right thing. He characterized his removal as "totally a miscarriage of justice. I did what was right. I've always told the truth about it."

Court records from Adams County shows that Clinton's guilty verdict was overturned after prosecutors failed to meet the burden of proof that Clinton had committed the crime, per ABC News.

But the commission found that Adrian's claim that "he reversed his guilty finding based on his reconsideration of the evidence and his conclusion that the State had failed to prove its case to be a subterfuge — respondent’s attempt to justify the reversal post hoc.”

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