A veteran Illinois judge has been removed from the bench after an oversight panel ruled that he engaged in misconduct and tried to circumvent the law when he reversed an 18-year-old’s rape conviction.
The Judicial Inquiry Board filed a three-count amended complaint with the Illinois Courts Commission in January 2023, accusing Adams County Judge Robert Adrian of “willful misconduct, conduct that was prejudicial to the administration of justice and that brought the judicial office into disrepute.”
After a three-day hearing on the complaint in November, the commission concluded Friday that instead of just a reprimand or censure, the Quincy, Illinois, judge’s behavior is “ample grounds for removal.”
Adrian “has engaged in multiple instances of misconduct, he abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law, he lied under oath on multiple occasions, and he has failed to acknowledge his misconduct,” the commission ruled.
“Much more was required of [Adrian],” the ruling said. “Based on our findings in this case and Commission precedent, we conclude the only appropriate sanction is to remove [Adrian] from the office of circuit court judge, effective immediately.”
Drew Clinton had just turned 18 when he was charged in June 2021 with three counts of criminal sexual assault against a 16-year-old girl at a graduation party the previous month. Clinton faced allegations that he knowingly committed sexual acts by threat or or force and that he committed such acts knowing the girl was unable to consent.
In October 2021, a brief trial ended with Adrian finding Clinton guilty on one of the three counts of felony sexual assault. The judge revoked Clinton’s bond at the time due to the conviction requiring a mandatory minimum four-year prison term.
But months later, Adrian reversed the guilty ruling and said he would not impose the mandatory sentence, saying the 148 days Clinton had served in county jail so far was “plenty of punishment.”
“This happened when this teenager ― because he was and is a teenager ― was two weeks past 18 years old. He has no prior record, none whatsoever,” Adrian said at the January 2022 sentencing hearing. “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,” he said. “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.”
Clinton was accused of sexually assaulting Cameron Vaughan, who has since come forward publicly and reached the age of 18. Vaughan told The Associated Press in November that Adrian’s reversal left her “completely shocked” but determined to remove the judge, who she recalled had made comments implying that the nature of the graduation party is why she was assaulted. (HuffPost policy is to not name a victim of sexual violence without their consent or if they have spoken publicly about the case.)
“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 at the sentencing hearing.
“It’s just ― they allow 16-year-olds to bring liquor to a party. They provide liquor to underage people, and you wonder how these things happen,” he said. “Well, that’s how these things happen. The court is totally disgusted with that whole thing.”
The reversal caused massive public outrage, with an organization that helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse saying that Adrian’s ruling sent a “chilling message” to other survivors that their behavior would be judged instead of that of the person who harmed them.
According to Adams County court records, Adrian said he overturned Clinton’s conviction because he felt prosecutors did not meet the burden of proof to prove the teenager was guilty.
“The reality is that I had second thoughts on the finding of guilty shortly after the several day trial. I found haunting Clinton being in jail pending the hearing on the post-trial motions,” Adrian said in a March 2022 written response to the Judicial Inquiry Board, which at the time was looking into allegations of misconduct related to the judge’s reversal.
“My focus on reconsideration was the issue of consent,” he said. “The People must have proven beyond a reasonable doubt [Vaughan] was unable to consent. I finally concluded it had not.”
But the commission wrote on Friday that the judge “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 ― [Adrian’s] attempt to justify the reversal post hoc.”
After the commission’s ruling, Adrian told The Chicago Tribune that removing him from the bench is “totally a miscarriage of justice.”
“I did what was right,” he told the paper. “I’ve always told the truth about it.”
On Friday, Vaughan told the Tribune that she was “very happy that the commission could see all the wrong and all the lies that [Adrian] told the entire time.”
“I’m so unbelievably happy right now,” she said. “He can’t hurt anybody else. He can’t ruin anyone else’s life.”
