Aaron Persky, the judge who was recalled by Santa Clara County voters after sentencing Brock Turner to a perceived light sentence in his 2016 sexual assault conviction, lost another job to public pressure. This time, it was a position as a high school girls junior varsity tennis coach.

The firing is different from the recall. It tells judges that not only could they lose their jobs on the bench if they dare show mercy to an unpopular defendant, but that they themselves will be personally ostracized as if they were as guilty as the person who committed the crime.

Those who advocated for firing Persky from his coaching position characterized him in ways suggesting he was guilty of Turner’s crimes. They argued that girls could not feel safe with him and that he was not a good role model for abuse survivors. This equating of the judge to the person he sentenced is the kind of rhetoric that will only deepen our nation’s mass incarceration epidemic.

It should be obvious: Judge Persky did not commit any crime. He did not condone violence against women. He was simply a judge, and one who showed mercy. Even if one is displeased with the sentence in the Turner case, to suggest that Judge Persky himself is somehow an abuser crosses a line.

Yet many progressives (a label I embrace) have adopted a mob justice mentality of late toward anyone who either defends or shows mercy for an unpopular defendant. It started with the Persky recall last year. Recently, it led to Harvard forcing its first black faculty deans of an undergraduate house to step down from those positions (they remain employed as professors) after student protests based on Ronald Sullivan’s position on Harvey Weinstein’s defense team. Now it has led to Persky’s firing in the seemingly benign position of tennis coach.

Of course, lawyers and judges have different roles. Lawyers are obliged to advocate for their clients and judges should be fair and balanced in reaching their decisions without regard for public opinion. But the suggestion that a lawyer who advocates for a client or a judge who shows mercy is the same as the person who committed the crime only leads to a less humane system.

I am a public defender, and have defended people charged with rape, robbery, and murder. Am I a rapist and murderer because I have begged for mercy for them? Does advocating for recognizing the humanity of someone who has committed a crime make one culpable for those offenses? Surely that cannot be the lesson the Persky opponents — many of whom I know to consider themselves advocates of criminal justice reform — hope to spread.

Much of what has driven the reaction to Persky is outrage regarding what many see as a past failure of the criminal justice system to take sexual violence against women seriously. But the way to correct that is not through blanket demands for harsh penalties in every case for every defendant regardless of circumstances. Reforming the criminal justice system requires a willingness to see the person behind the charge.

Victims of sexual violence can and should have a voice in the system. The way to do that involves restorative justice and real rehabilitative efforts. Longer sentences don’t protect women, prevent future sexual assault, or lead to rehabilitation; they just perpetuate mass incarceration.

Judges’ fear over the Persky backlash is an often unspoken reality in criminal courtrooms now. Defense attorneys and prosecutors all know that judges are far less likely to go out on a limb to show mercy to a defendant because the potential personal consequences are too severe. It means people accused of a crime are more likely to be sentenced by judges to longer prison terms, or more likely to take bad plea deals to avoid a harsh sentence. It means innocent people are even more likely to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit to avoid trial out of fear of the risk of the jury getting it wrong — and a judge too afraid to acknowledge or rectify it.

Some insist that the Persky backlash teaches judges a more limited lesson: Do not be lenient on the privileged. Some even argue that by attacking Persky they are in fact encouraging judges to be lenient on those in the criminal justice system who don’t have the race or class advantages Turner had.

That’s naïve at best. The people paying the price for Turner’s crime aren’t anything like him. The criminal justice system is not brimming with charges against the rich and privileged. Instead, we have a system overwhelmingly targeting poor people of color, who are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced harshly.

What judges watching the Persky backlash will learn is that they have little incentive to determine whether they might be “safe” imposing a light sentence. Instead they adopt the one-size-punishes-all approach by erring on the side of harshness.

After all, there is little public outcry when judges routinely sentence people to decades or even life in prison. Even in the thousands of cases where there have been wrongful convictions, no one has come after those judges for not overruling the juries. Those judges still get to continue working as judges, speak on panels, teach at schools, and receive awards.

When we stigmatize the very act of a judge showing humanity to someone in the criminal justice system, we are not just hurting the Harvey Weinsteins and Brock Turners of the world — but everyone else as well.

Rachel Marshall is a public defender in Oakland.

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