Are You Kidding Me, Your Honor?

Law & Justice

Just when we might have thought that losing Republicans Missouri Representative Todd Akin and Indiana Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock were neanderthal aberrations when it came to the subject of “forcible” rape, comes word of the admonition of Orange County, California, Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson by the state’s Commission on Judicial Performance.

It seems the commission – better late than never – has just gotten around to reviewing a sentence Judge Johnson gave out – or rather didn’t give out – back in 2008. So if you’re wondering where Akin and Mourdock might have picked up their arcane views in the intervening four years, look no further.

In the case in question, Judge Johnson denied the prosecutor’s request for a sixteen-year prison sentence to forty-three-year-old Metin Reza Gurel, a Turkish national who had stalked his ex-girlfriend with a GPS device and, according to the Huffington Post and other news sources, “threatened to mutilate [her]  face and genitals . . .  with a heated screwdriver, beat her with a metal baton and other violent threats before committing rape, forced oral copulation, and other crimes.”

Why did Judge Johnson, a former county sex crimes prosecutor, instead opt for a shorter sentence of six years in prison?  Because she didn’t put up enough of a fight.

“I’m not a gynecologist,” his honor rightly observed from his hallowed position on the judicial bench, “but I can tell you something. If someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case. That tells me that the victim in this case, although she wasn’t necessarily willing, she didn’t put up a fight. And to treat this case like the rape cases that we all hear about is an insult to victims of rape. I think it’s an insult. I think it trivializes a rape. I found this whole case to be a technical case. The rape is technical. The forced oral copulation is technical.”

In other words, it’s not enough to threaten a women with mutilation or death. You actually have to try it for it to be a real rape.

As the Huff Post reported, Johnson “said during the man’s 2008 sentencing that he had seen violent cases on [the sex crimes] unit in which women’s vaginas were ‘shredded’ by rape.”

Is that his threshold standard?

Now, this whole incident brings up several key questions.

First, in order of stupidity, was Derek Johnson the only man in America who, by 2008, hadn’t heard the phrase, “No means No”?

Second, why did it take a state commission four years to “admonish” this jurist?

Third, why is a judge imposing his own opinion over a state law that has been on the books since 1980 that specifically states a rape victim does not have to prove she resisted or even that she was prevented from resisting for fear of bodily harm or death? And this woman certainly had those fears.

And fourth, why is he still on the bench? Is this the kind of justice California wants to render?

The commission, by way of explanation for its tardiness, said that it only became aware of the judge’s comments in May 2012. Apparently, none of the commissioners read OC Weekly, which reported the case and the judge’s remarks in 2008 when they occurred.

In its written explanation of its 10-0 decision to admonish Judge Johnson, the commission chairman  Lawrence J. Simi stated:

“The judge’s remarks reflected outdated, biased and insensitive views about sexual assault victims who do not ‘put up a fight.’ Such comments cannot help but diminish public confidence and trust in the impartiality of the judiciary.”

Ya think?

In his official apology to the commission, Judge Johnson explained that his “inappropriate” comments were due to frustration over a heated argument with the prosecutor who requested the longer sentence.

I guess the prosecutor didn’t understand that No means No.

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