A California judge's controversial comments regarding a rape victim not putting up "a fight" during her sexual assault have drawn fire from fellow legal experts and others.
Following California Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson's comments at a 2008 sentencing where he said that a rape victim "didn't put up a fight" and that a person's body could reject sexual intercourse if they didn't want it to happen, the California Commission of Judicial Performance voted Thursday 10-0 to publicly admonish Johnson, citing the comments as inappropriate and breaking judicial ethics.
During the 2008 sentencing, Johnson rejected a prosecutor's motion to put a 16-year prison sentence on Metin Gurel after he was convicted on charges of rape, forcible oral copulation, domestic battery, stalking, and making threats against his former live-in girlfriend.
Prosecutors said that Gurel had threatened the woman with a screwdriver on the day he allegedly raped her. While the woman reported the criminal threats the next day, she did not report the rape until more than two weeks after it allegedly happened.
However, Johnson imposed only a six-year prison sentence, implying that in his opinion, the victim's body would have shut down if they truly did not want to have sex.
"I'm not a gynecologist, 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," Johnson said.
The panel's judgment was stinging in its admonishing of Johnson, calling his comments "outdated, biased and insensitive."
"Such comments cannot help but diminish public confidence and trust in the impartiality of the judiciary," wrote Lawrence J. Simi, the commission's chairman.
The commission, which became aware of Johnson's comments in May of this year, noted that Johnson had apologized to the panel, but neither the judge - who remains on the bench - nor his attorney Paul S. Meyer would comment on the situation, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
It is not the first time this year that comments on rape by public officials have caused a firestorm. In October, Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in the state, said during a debate that children who were born of rape were "something that God intended to happen."
The remarks, condemned by President Obama and the subject of many late night jokes, cost Mourdock dearly in the polls and ultimately losing to Democrat Joe Donnelly.