California finally got it right. If the name Aaron Perksy doesn’t sound familiar, perhaps Brock Turner does. Turner was the Stanford swimmer convicted of raping a woman and being sentenced to a whopping six months in jail. Persky was that judge. For weeks after handing down that sentence, national media kept the horror of it all alive. Then nothing. Would California voters do anything? It took time but last night they finally let their voices be heard and Persky was recalled.

Wow. The @sfchronicle is calling the race to recall Brock Turner sentencing Judge Aaron Persky. He is the first California judge to be recalled since 1932.

— Heather Knight (@hknightsf) June 6, 2018

Perhaps California shouldn’t have waited so long to recall a judge. However, if one needed to be recalled, it was Persky.

The victim in the Turner case was not only drunk at the time of the rape but she was unconscious. Yet Persky apparently bought the argument that Turner somehow failed to realize she had not given consent to sex. The California voters did not agree that was a valid defense.

Persky’s supporters argued that recalling him would “both erode the democratic process and cause judges everywhere to impose lengthier sentences for fear of public backlash.” Perhaps the question should be, “is this a bad thing?” Aren’t criminal sentences supposed to punish someone for violating the law? Aren’t they supposed to act as a deterrent to prevent others from acting illegally?

What happened in California shows the frustration voters everywhere have with judges handing down sentences that are not in line with the crime.

Would the recall have happened if it weren’t for the #MeToo movement? Possibly. The outrage over the judgment was real and started before the movement began dominating the news. However, as USA today notes, “ballots cast Tuesday were made in the backdrop of the movement, which has emboldened sexual assault survivors and forced criminal investigations and oustings of powerful men, most notably with Harvey Weinstein.”

Will the recall be a reason for stricter sentences from judges? Only time will tell. It should, however, be a wakeup call. Voters are tired of the lenient sentences being given to certain defendants for serious crimes. Judges who refuse to apply the law equally to defendants, judges who don’t appear to value the rights of the victims as much as they do the rights of the accused need to be aware that the tide is turning.

It is no longer enough to say a sentence was legal. The sentence should fit the crime. The sentence should take into account the history of the defendant. It should take into account the bearing of the defendant — is there remorse, is there an admittance of having done something wrong? Most of all, a judge shouldn’t be so foolish as to talk about how a prison sentence will have a “severe impact” on the defendant’s life and not take into account the severe impact the rape will have on the victim.