Robert Adrian Removed

Judge Robert Adrian convicted Drew Clinton, then 18, of felony sexual assault against a 16-year-old girl after a bench trial in October 2021 — Adrian himself found him guilty. Months later, Adrian reversed his own conviction, throwing out the finding and the mandatory sentence that would have come with it.

Explaining the reversal from the bench, Adrian told the courtroom, "this is what happens whenever parents allow teenagers to drink alcohol, to swim in pools with their undergarments on" — remarks that shifted blame onto the victim's family rather than explaining any legal basis for undoing his own verdict.

The Illinois Courts Commission investigated and sustained a misconduct complaint against Adrian, finding he had "engaged in multiple instances of misconduct" and had "abused his position of power to indulge his own sense of justice while circumventing the law." The Commission removed him from the bench in February 2024. Adrian called the decision "a total political hit job."

This isn't a case of a reviewing court disagreeing with a legal call Adrian was entitled to make. The state's own judicial disciplinary body found he circumvented the law itself to reach the outcome he personally preferred, in a sexual assault case, and punctuated it with remarks blaming a teenage victim's parents rather than explaining his legal reasoning — a judge substituting his own sense of justice for the verdict he had already reached, and blaming a child for it on the way out.