Utah judge under fire for rape case sympathy

In this Thursday, March 30, 2017, photo, Keith Vallejo leaves the courtroom, in Provo, Utah. A Utah judge sentencing the former Mormon bishop said the convicted rapist was an "extraordinary, good man" who did something wrong. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Judge Thomas Low appeared to become emotional on Wednesday, April 12, 2017, when he sentenced Vallejo to up to life in prison for 10 counts of forcible sexual abuse and one count of object rape. (Dominic Valente/Daily Herald via AP, Pool)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah judicial oversight commission representative says the number of comments about a judge calling a convicted rapist a “good man” during his sentencing hearing has nearly tripled since Friday.

Jennifer Yim said Monday that she has received in total about 120 emails, phone calls and Facebook messages about Judge Thomas Low.

That number is up from about 46 on Friday.

The messages started coming in late March when Low came under scrutiny for letting Keith Robert Vallejo out of custody after a jury found him guilty of 10 counts of forcible sexual abuse and one count of object rape.

Yim says most of the messages, though, have come since Low’s remarks at Vallejo’s sentencing hearing Wednesday.

Yim says on average her organization receives about two or three comments about Utah judges each week, so this is “an extraordinary number.”

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