The woman at the center of the case where an Illinois judge overturned the conviction of a man accused of sexual assault says that the 2022 decision left her “broken” — and now she’s applauding the ouster of that judge.
In a scathing 33-page ruling released Friday, the Illinois Courts Commission, a state oversight board, removed Adams County Judge Robert Adrian from the bench.
This comes two years after he sparked outrage by vacating 18-year-old Drew Clinton’s sexual assault conviction, a charge stemming from a May graduation 2021 party in Quincy, Illinois, where he was accused of assaulting Cameron Vaughan, then 16.
“I cried. I cried so much,” Vaughan, who goes by “Cammy” and is now 18, told NBC News on Sunday, about reading the commission’s ruling. “I was just — it was unbelievable.”
Watch the interview on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT.
Following a three-day bench trial in October 2021, Judge Adrian originally found Drew Clinton guilty of one count of criminal sexual assault, a felony carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison.
A few days into 2022, in a stunning move from the bench, Adrian announced that he was reversing himself and letting Clinton walk free. According to court transcripts, Adrian said the defendant’s nearly five months in county jail was “plenty of punishment.”
Adrian said, “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.”
Vaughan, who had prepared a victim impact statement that she wasn’t allowed to read, said she ran from the courtroom in tears as her father followed. She said the attack had an immediate impact on her life.
“Because what (Clinton) did was not right. I mean, it ruined me,” she said. Vaughan, who now works…
Read the full article here
