text: Raul Ramirez to be sentenced to three years in prison for case with similarities to Stanford sexual assault case for which Brock Turner will serve only six months 
   
   The embattled judge in the Stanford sexual assault trial is presiding over a similar case in which a Latino man is facing a much harsher sentence than Brock Turner, raising questions about how the former student may have benefited from his privileged background. 
   
   Raul Ramirez, a 32-year-old immigrant from El Salvador who admitted to sexually assaulting his female roommate in a case that has similarities with the Stanford case, will be sentenced to three years in state prison under a deal overseen by judge Aaron Persky, according to records obtained by the Guardian. 
   
   The three-year-prison sentence, part of a plea agreement signed in March, provides a sharp contrast to the outcome for Turner, a white 20-year-old former Stanford swimmer who Persky sentenced to probation and six months in county jail after he was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. 
   
   
   
   Ex-Stanford swimmer gets six months in jail and probation for sexual assault Read more 
   
   The parallel cases, which include similar felony charges of sexual assault, could lend weight to what critics of Persky allege are biases in his courtroom. Others, however, argue that Persky’s actions were reasonable and that the divergence in punishments stems from broader disparities in the criminal justice system. 
   
   “What’s happened with Mr Ramirez is standard,” said Alexander Cross, a defense attorney who briefly represented Ramirez when his family could afford a private lawyer. “The anomaly is the Stanford case.” 
   
   ‘He wanted to say sorry’ 
   
   The details of the Stanford sexual assault conviction have become well known since the case received global attention. On 18 January 2015, two passersby on campus spotted Turner “thrusting” on top of a motionless woman lying on the ground outside of a fraternity house by a dumpster. 
   
   Turner, from Dayton, Ohio, admitted to fingering her, but claimed it was consensual. A jury disagreed and convicted him of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. 
   
   Instead of sentencing him to the minimum of two years in state prison prescribed by law, Persky made an exception for Turner, determining that his case was “unusual” and that prison would have a “severe impact” on him. After the victim’s impact statement went viral, the judge’s controversial sentencing decision, which will result in Turner spending three months in jail, received international scorn. 
   
   Critics slammed the judge for being sympathetic to Turner and concluding that there was “less moral culpability” because he was intoxicated at the time. Persky is now facing a recall campaign led by a Stanford law professor, and lawmakers have called for an investigation. 
   
   Court documents show that although the allegations in Ramirez’s case mirror the Stanford assault in several ways, the defendant had a very different experience at multiple stages of the court process. 
   
   Ramirez was arrested at his home in Santa Clara County in November 2014 after his roommate called 911 to say that he had sexually assaulted her, according to police reports. 
   
   Stanford sexual assault case: victim impact statement in full Read more 
   
   Ramirez gave the woman a “love letter” and later entered her bedroom and fingered her for about five to 10 minutes against her will, according to a police report, and stopped only when she started crying. 
   
   When police arrived, he admitted to the assault. “Ramirez knew what he did was wrong and he wanted to say sorry,” one officer wrote. 
   
   Ramirez, who has used a Spanish interpreter in court, had his bail set at $200,000 – significantly higher than the $150,000 bail set for Turner. 
   
   Ramirez could not be reached for comment, and multiple attorneys who have represented him declined to connect him to the Guardian. 
   
   ‘A question of lifestyle’ 
   
   Judge Persky handled the hearings and negotiations in the Ramirez case, according to Santa Clara county prosecutors. Terry Lynn Harman, assistant district attorney, said that the judge agreed with the prosecutors’ position throughout the process – that Ramirez should receive a state prison sentence. 
   
   According to records of the plea deal that Persky oversaw, Ramirez agreed to plead guilty to a felony of sexual penetration by force. Under the terms of the deal, he will spend three years in state prison, the minimum punishment for the offense. 
   
   Persky is expected to formalize the three-year sentence at a later date, Harman said. 
   
   The prosecution had no objections to Persky’s handling of the case, she added. In the Turner case, the Santa Clara district attorney slammed Persky’s sentencing decision. 
   
   Ramirez, like Turner, has no criminal record of convictions for serious or violent felonies, according to court records. 
   
   Because Ramirez ultimately pleaded guilty to a felony offense that does not have an option for probation or a lighter sentence, Persky was limited in the sentence he could approve for the specific conviction. 
   
   But critics say that Persky, a former Stanford athlete himself, bent over backwards to make an exception in the Turner case, and that if he wanted to give Ramirez the same favorable treatment, the judge could have utilized his discretion and recommended a less harsh prosecution. 
   
   Specifically, Persky could have approved or helped negotiate a bargain in which Ramirez only pleaded guilty to the lesser of two charges he was facing – assault with intent to commit rape. If the more serious charge was dropped – as was the case with Turner, who had two rape charges dropped – Ramirez could have potentially avoided prison. 
   
   Michele Landis Dauber, the Stanford professor leading the recall, said the Ramirez case was further evidence that the judge should be removed. “This just shows that our concern about Judge Persky’s ability to be unbiased is justified. We continue to think that he abused his discretion in giving an unduly lenient sentence to Turner,” he said. 
   
   Ramirez’s three-year deal “shows that Turner got consideration not available to other defendants who aren’t as privileged”, added Dauber, who is also a family friend of the Stanford victim. 
   
   Persky is barred from commenting on pending cases. 
   
   While the Ramirez case and the Stanford assault have clear differences in race and class – Cross said Ramirez is “very poor” – the two stories also diverge in the defendants’ responses. 
   
   Turner has continued to blame his assault on a “party culture” of “drinking”, claiming that the woman consented, even though police and others confirmed that she was unconscious. Ramirez pleaded guilty and, according to police accounts, apologized. 
   
   In court, Persky said Turner should not be faulted for refusing to admit to the assault: “I’m not convinced that his lack of complete acquiescence to the verdict should count against him.” 
   
   Cross said that when privileged defendants can pay a private attorney and articulate the ways in which a prison sentence would have a severe impact – destroying a promising athletic career, for example – they fare better than average working class people. “It’s really a question of lifestyle.” 
   
   Persky had dozens of letters from Turner’s friends and family attesting to his character and outlining what it would mean to be separated from him if he went to prison. 
   
   Cross said that in a case like Ramirez’s, “society is not exactly suffering a loss. At least, that’s not how it’s looked upon”. 
   
   Experts also note that it’s not surprising a low-income defendant of color would face a worse outcome than a white man in comparable cases. 
   
   “Whether due to implicit bias or other factors, race still plays a role in sentencing outcomes,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform group. 
   
   Research has repeatedly shown that black and Latino people sentenced in state and federal courts are much more likely to face incarceration than white offenders in similar circumstances – and they receive longer sentences. 
   
   Persky’s defenders 
   
   In the wake of the intense backlash against Persky, public defenders and other criminal justice reform advocates have come to his defense, arguing that judges must have discretion to issue lenient sentences when appropriate. 
   
   An Associated Press review of 20 criminal cases for which Persky has issued sentences also concluded that there didn’t appear to be any racial biases in his decisions. 
   
   Gary Goodman, a supervising attorney for the Santa Clara County public defender’s office, who has spoken up in favor of Persky, was one of several lawyers who represented Ramirez. 
   
   He pointed out that the distinct outcomes in the two cases stems from the way that California law treats sexual assault of a conscious person as a more serious offense than attacking an unconscious victim. 
   
   Goodman also said that Persky played a passive role in Ramirez’s plea negotiations. 
   
   Cross, too, said that although he believes that the system favors wealthier, privileged defendants, he did not fault Persky. 
   
   “I’ve found him to be one of the fairest judges.” ||||| First, we are proud of your leading role in advocating for reform of how society responds to sexual violence. Rape and other forms of sexual assault are urgent problems that are too often neglected or obscured by euphemisms, silence, and shame. The best scholars use their expertise to shine light on pressing civic issues like these: they articulate their visions of a more just society, and they engage with policymakers and the public to spur and shape reform. We’ve been privileged to learn at a place where faculty like you take up that mantle. 
   
   We’d also like to emphasize our agreement with your goals. We, like you, believe that members of the Stanford community — indeed, of every community — should be doing all we can to confront the problem head on, by preventing sexual violence in the first place, ensuring that those who experience it receive support and healing, and insisting that those responsible face consequences that reflect the seriousness of their actions. We, like you, are disturbed by the six-month jail sentence that Turner received, which appears lenient when measured against the relevant sentencing guidelines, the much-longer sentences many thousands of Americans are serving for less-serious crimes, and the trauma that the target of his assault so bravely described at Turner’s sentencing hearing. And we, like you, are especially troubled by our suspicion that race and privilege explain those discrepancies. Accountability means little when we demand it only from the already-disenfranchised, and the transformative power of mercy is diminished when we reserve it only for the privileged. 
   
   At the same time, one aspect of your recent advocacy troubles us: the nascent campaign you have championed to recall Judge Aaron Persky, who sentenced Turner. We have deep reservations about the idea of a judge — any judge — being fired over sentencing decisions that the public perceives as too lenient. 
   
   As we’ve learned during our time at the law school, judicial independence is a cornerstone of due process and an essential prerequisite of a fair criminal justice system. Judges are entrusted with immense power over the life and liberty of criminal defendants from all walks of life, and they need latitude to exercise that power judiciously. After decades of mass incarceration driven by mandatory minimums and other punitive sentencing regimes, we believe that judicial leniency is already too scarce, even though we strongly disagree with how it was applied to Turner. And in a world where judges believe they are one unpopular sentencing decision away from an abrupt pink slip, it will only grow scarcer. A high-profile campaign to recall Judge Persky because he showed too much solicitude for a defendant convicted of odious crimes would evoke an ugly chapter of California’s history: when three justices of our state’s highest court were recalled from the bench because they voted to oppose the death penalty, in accordance with the dictates of justice and the constitution as they understood them. Though the values underlying that effort were different from the ones animating the current recall debate, the chilling effect on judicial independence would be the same. 
   
   To be clear, our hesitation about a recall campaign does not stem from a belief that Judge Persky’s decision to give Turner a below-guidelines sentence was correct or that his stated justifications for doing so were sound. Many of us, like you, believe that justice called for a stiffer sentence in his case. But we think humility requires us to recognize that we won’t always be able to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate exercises of judicial mercy. If you or we claim the power to make that decision, how can we credibly deny it to anyone else? If we demand that Judge Persky immediately hand over his gavel for acting on his empathy for this defendant, how we can we credibly assure any other judge that her hand need not waver when the human circumstances of a case seem to call for compassion? 
   
   This is not an abstract concern: many of us count our work with Stanford’s Three Strikes Project as one of the most powerful experiences we had at SLS. Through the project, we represented clients serving life sentences for non-violent felonies as they petitioned for early release under Propositions 36 and 47 — transformative ballot measures championed by your Stanford colleagues, which have begun to roll back the worst excesses of California’s punitive sentencing laws. In that role, we had to ask county judges like Aaron Persky to grant early release to men and women serving life in prison because the people of California once believed that our clients’ mistakes made them irredeemable. Even when an inmate has made great strides in prison, and even though statistics show that people resentenced under Propositions 36 and 47 pose little danger of recidivism, granting that second chance is a delicate decision that requires courage on the part of judges: they have to bear the risk, however remote, that the petitioner will abuse that mercy in ways that provoke public backlash against their decision. 
   
   We believe it would send a powerful message to these judges and others making similar decisions around the country if, while continuing to critique Judge Persky’s sentencing decisions and calling for a different approach in future cases, you abstained from your effort to recall him from the bench and instead focused on other avenues of response and reform. These might include educating future judges and jurors about the realities of sexual assault, or pressing for systemic changes in how these cases are handled. We simply ask that you withhold your support for a recall campaign that would set a dangerous precedent against the exercise of merciful discretion in our criminal justice system. 
   
   Sincerely, 
   
   Akiva Freidlin, Emi Young, Ginny Halden, Jeannie Lieder, Madeleine McKenna, Michael Skocpol, Nick Rosellini, and Vina Seelam (Drafters) ||||| In the midst of ongoing controversy over former Stanford student Brock Turner’s six-month jail sentence for sexual assault, a group of 53 recent graduates of Stanford Law School (SLS) have come forward with an open letter to SLS’s Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law Michele Dauber that criticizes Turner’s lenient sentencing but at the same time urges Dauber to reconsider her efforts to recall Judge Aaron Persky ’84 A.M. ’85. 
   
   The recall movement that has thrust Persky into the national spotlight includes several online petitions that called for his removal from the bench after many criticized his sentence for Turner as too light. Dauber has blasted the sentence in several media outlets. In her article for the Washington Post, she responds to Roderick O’Connor, a deputy public defender who has opposed the recall movement. 
   
   “Brock Turner’s sentence for three violent sexual felonies isn’t merely shocking, it’s dangerous,�? she writes. “It reinforces the myth that sexual assault is not a serious crime, particularly when it is perpetrated by young white male athletes in elite universities.�? 
   
   Dauber has been an active organizer for the recall efforts, spearheading the official California recall movement. And she has long been a prominent figure in the legal community for campus sexual assault. From 2011 to 2013, Dauber co-chaired Stanford’s Board on Judicial Affairs and helped to lead the first University process that reformed Stanford’s policy on sexual assault. 
   
   The law graduates’ open letter neither supports nor defends Persky’s decision, but rather focuses on issues of judicial independence and warns of a recall’s potential impact on future jurisdiction, according to several drafters. Although the dictionary term of judicial independence applies to federal judges (Persky is a state court judge), the letter-writers and signers are concerned with the consequences of a public majority recalling any judge. 
   
   “Judicial independence is a cornerstone of due process and an essential prerequisite of a fair criminal justice system,�? the letter states. 
   
   The SLS graduates emphasize that they are just as troubled as Dauber by the case’s handling of the issues of race, privilege and sexual assault– and that they do not believe that Persky’s decision was correct. However, they argue that judges must be allowed discretion: 
   
   …humility requires us to recognize that we won’t always be able to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate exercises of judicial mercy. If you or we claim the power to make that decision, how can we credibly deny it to anyone else? If we demand that Judge Persky immediately hand over his gavel for acting on his empathy for this defendant, how we can we credibly assure any other judge that her hand need not waver when the human circumstances of a case seem to call for compassion? 
   
   Nicholas Rosellini ’12 J.D. ’16, who helped draft the letter, discussed the recall as a dangerous precedent to set. He said that to ensure due process, judges must be able to examine facts without fear of an angry public. 
   
   Rosellini, who participated in SLS’s Three Strikes Project, worries that erosions in judicial independence could affect the future of disenfranchised people. He said that judges are the last stop for “unpopular people�? such as the incarcerated, the convicted, the accused, and minorities. 
   
   “Once you do that [recall process], it’s really hard to credibly deny that to the next group of people who are angry for another reason that might be unjustified,�? Rosellini said. 
   
   Another drafter of the letter, Akiva Freidlin J.D. ’16, explained the motivation and planning of the letter. He, like many others across the country, were frightened by the implications of the sexual assault case. 
   
   “But I started to see the response taking shape as a ‘we should get rid of this particular judge,’ who appears to have applied the law legally,�? Freidlin said. “[This] goes against the principles that allow us to have a system where an independent judiciary applies laws that they don’t make.�? 
   
   Both Freidlin and Rosellini urged other avenues of advocacy to replace a recall. The letter concludes by asking Dauber to pursue different reform tactics such as “educating future judges and jurors about the realities of sexual assault, or pressing for systemic changes in how these cases are handled.�? 
   
   The SLS graduates are not the only judicially-minded voice of opposition to the recall efforts. A number of California public defenders have launched their own online petition, while SLS Professor Emerita Barbara Bobcock recently criticized the recall effort in her own open letter. 
   
   In response to these viewpoints, Dauber has pointed out in other news outlets that, under the California constitution, judges are elected and therefore “accountable to the people.�? She argues that recall is a constitutional right for citizens of Santa Clara county, emphasizing that the recall efforts are not accusing Persky of illegal action, but rather are using the process provided in the state constitution for dealing with a judge’s misuse of his discretion. 
   
   In an email to The Daily, Dauber said she has to “respectfully disagree�? with the law students who wrote the letter. 
   
   “In their view, both victims and defendants in Judge Persky’s courtroom simply have to endure biased treatment in order to avoid a hypothetical and highly unlikely set of consequences,�? Dauber wrote, after noting that the law students agreed that the sentencing was unjust. “This argument does not take seriously these actual people who will not receive justice.�? 
   
   “I wonder if they would make this same argument if Turner had been convicted of a violent crime based on race or sexual orientation or gender identity rather than sex,�? she added. 
   
   But the law students remain fearful of a recall’s future consequences. 
   
   “At the end of the day, someone has to make the decision as to what [constitutes] justified or unjustified anger,�? Rosellini said. “The recall effort inevitably puts that responsibility on the majority of the voting public. And the voting majority, sometimes they get it right, as in this case, but other times, they might not.�? 
   
   Contact Isabela Bumanlag at isabela7 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 
   
   This article has been updated to reflect Michele Dauber’s comments to The Daily. ||||| A new poll about the potential recall of Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky -- whose June 2 sentence of former Stanford University student-athlete Brock Turner for sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman sparked an uproar across the globe and on social media over its brevity -- shows how some county residents would vote in an actual recall election. 
   
   Sixty-six percent of the 776 respondents said they would vote to recall Persky, according to the poll conducted June 20-22 by Sextant Strategies & Research, a Claremont-based consulting and research firm, for Capitol Weekly, a publication that covers California government and politics. 
   
   The 776 responses were collected from 226,420 registered voters in Santa Clara County who have provided their email addresses to the Registrar of Voters. 
   
   The results were "weighted to reflect the overall demographics of all voters, not just those for whom we have email addresses," pollster Jonathan Brown wrote in an email. There are some 788,063 voters registered in the county. 
   
   An official recall campaign launched by Stanford University Law professor Michele Dauber and backed by the Progressive Women Silicon Valley State PAC is currently raising funds and plans next spring to gather the signatures needed to mount a special election in Santa Clara County to put Persky's recall to voters. Brown noted in a Capitol Weekly column on the poll that such a "recall is not going to be won or lost based on the number of likes and retweets, speeches given, or how many times the victim's letter is re-read. 
   
   "It comes down to the narrow universe of actual voters in Santa Clara County participating in a future, likely low intensity, local election." 
   
   The poll found that Turner's sentence -- six months in county jail and three years of probation -- was "widely understood by voters and violated their sense of justice," Brown wrote in the Capitol Weekly column. (Editor's note: The poll actually misstated the sentence, telling voters that the length of probation was three months, not three years. Brown wrote in an email to the Weekly that while he regrets the "inadvertent human" error, he feels "quite comfortable that the length of the jail sentence is the driving factor in these results.") 
   
   Sixty-three percent of voters believe that the Turner sentence demonstrates that Persky cannot be fair in any case, rather than a "one-time lapse" on a high-profile case, Brown wrote. 
   
   Women, and especially younger women, expressed more than 4-to-1 support of the recall, Brown wrote. 
   
   Sixty-seven percent of respondents said the following aligns most closely with their opinion of the sentence: "This sentence is a sign that Judge Persky might have problems with ethics or an ability to be a fair judge in all cases." 
   
   Thirty-three percent, however, thought that the sentence represents a "single error of judgment ... a flaw in one stand-alone case." 
   
   The implications of race and privilege in this case have been raised by many. More than three-quarters (77 percent) of respondents in the poll agreed that if Turner had been African American or Latino, he would have received a tougher sentence. 
   
   After reading a pro-recall statement provided in the survey that calls Persky's sentencing decision an "insult to victims of sexual assault and women," respondents supported the recall in slightly greater numbers -- by an increase of 2 percent. 
   
   Support dropped to 59 percent, however, after respondents read an anti-recall message that argues "removing a judge of a single, high-profile case sets a very dangerous precedent that will cause judges to pay more attention to public opinion than following the law and their best judgment." 
   
   Voters 55 years and older  whom Brown wrote "tend to dominate low-turnout off-year elections, which is what this recall would be"  were split on their final recall vote: 51 percent of male respondents 55 years and older said they would support it as well as 55 percent of women in that age group. 
   
   Respondents were split evenly by gender (49 percent male and 51 percent female) and were primarily Caucasian. The age groups with the most participation were 18 to 24 years old (24 percent) and over 65 years old (23 percent). 
   
   The poll results are available here. 
   
   --- 
   
   The Palo Alto Weekly has created Storify pages to capture ongoing coverage of the Brock Turner case as well as sexual-assault issues at Stanford University. To view them, go to storify.com/paloaltoweekly. 
   
   Follow the Palo Alto Weekly/Palo Alto Online on Twitter @PaloAltoWeekly and Facebook for breaking news, local events, photos, videos and more.
target: – The Brock Turner controversy rumbles on: A defendant from a very different background than the former Stanford student received a much harsher sentence from the same judge in a similar case, the Guardian reports. According to court records, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky oversaw a plea deal earlier this year involving Raul Ramirez, a 32-year-old man from El Salvador who sexually assaulted his female roommate. Ramirez, who needed an interpreter in court, agreed to plead guilty in a deal that will see him spend three years in state prison, while Turner will spend just six months in county jail. Critics say that if Persky had treated Ramirez as leniently as he treated Turner, a white 20-year-old, the Latino man would have ended up with a much lighter sentence or even have avoided prison. The deal "shows that Turner got consideration not available to other defendants who aren’t as privileged," says Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford professor leading a campaign to recall Persky, who's a former Stanford student. Persky's days on the bench may be numbered—a recent poll found that 66% of people in Santa Clara County would vote for his recall, Palo Alto Online reports—but a group of Stanford law grads is urging Dauber to reconsider the recall campaign, the Stanford Daily reports. In an open letter, they argue that it will be more effective to fight for "educating future judges and jurors about the realities of sexual assault, or pressing for systemic changes in how these cases are handled." (Persky was removed from another sexual assault case earlier this month.)