He was due to decide whether a former nurse should stand trial on charges he sexually assaulted a patient while she was sedated.
10:22, UK,Wednesday 15 June 2016
The judge under fire for giving a former Stanford University student a controversial sentence for raping an unconscious woman on campus has been removed from a new sexual assault case.
Judge Aaron Persky was due to decide whether a former San Jose nurse should stand trial on charges he sexually assaulted a patient while she was sedated.
Santa Clara County District attorney Jeff Rosen said the decision to reassign the case to another judge was "rare and carefully considered".
"We lack confidence that Judge (Aaron) Persky can fairly participate in this upcoming hearing in which a male nurse sexually assaulted an anaesthetised female patient," he said.
It comes just days after several potential jurors told the judge they could not serve on a jury in his courtroom because of his much-maligned sentencing of Brock Turner.
Petitions calling for action to be taken against the judge have amassed more than one million signatures after he handed the 20-year-old swimmer a six-month jail sentence for the January 2015 attack.
The punishment has been described as a "slap on the wrist" and was considerably less than the six-year sentence recommended by prosecutors.
Turner was convicted in March of three offences relating to the sexual assault and will be eligible for release in September.
The attack was stopped by two Swedish graduate students who happened to be cycling past and saw Turner raping the partially naked woman.
A harrowing witness statement from the victim which was read in court, has caused a national outcry - with Vice President Joe Biden writing an open letter in support of her.
A juror in the case told Judge Persky to tell him he "vehemently" disagreed with the 2 June sentence in a letter, posted online on Monday by the Palo Alto Weekly newspaper.
"I expected that this case would serve as a very strong deterrent to on-campus assaults but with the ridiculously lenient sentence, I am afraid that it makes a mockery of the whole trial," the juror wrote, concluding the letter: "Shame on you."
Judge Persky is prohibited from commenting on the case because Turner, who withdrew from Stanford after his arrest, is appealing against the conviction.
Turner's father, Dan Turner, has also been criticised for saying his son had paid "a steep price … for 20 minutes of action".
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