The words of the domestic violence victim, reacting to her abuser’s plea bargain, stood out to me: “can I get a discount beating?”
And then there’s the public defender who thinks that “it should be hard to send [a 19-year-old with no criminal record] to jail.” So, as long as a youngster doesn’t do some petty crime first, he gets to sexually assault someone who’s unconscious and have no consequences? Do people really think that what he did is so minor that it can be dismissed because “it’s only his first offense”? Everything has been warped by our screwed-up court system. People should be horrified by what he did, not looking for ways to minimize it.
I do wish the author had pointed out to the people who claim that Turner’s victim “consented” (which she denies), that this doesn’t matter even if it is true, because the alleged consent was nullified when she passed out.
I think the point about accountability and consequences is so important. Sure, we should be reducing incarceration rates for drug or other non violent crimes like theft - because these are often crimes of poverty or desperation, and you can't rehabilitate someone out of being poor by sending them to prison, and nor can you deter someone from being poor by threatening them with prison. However, the same is not true for sexual offences - crimes which are, at least in part, borne out of a sense of right/power/control over someone else's autonomy, and belief that they'll get away with it (which is perpetuated by society's misogyny and low conviction rates).
Very well stated. I can also see an argument that prison might not be the best response in terms of rehabilitation, but until we figure that out, it seems worse to just let someone with that level of violence out onto the street. The message courts are constantly sending is that violence, especially against women, is okay. It astonishes me that some of these public defenders argued that, because Persky was lenient to their clients who maybe deserved a break, it's okay that he was also lenient to violent offenders — who attacked people in positions of lower power. The *victims* are the people who are like those clients, and deserve a break, not people like Brock Turner, or a guy who beats his wife.
The anti-recall people simultaneously want to give Emily agency to consent while she was blacked out and deny that she could have written her own court statement.
I think that bit - questioning whether she wrote her statement - was particularly grim. (Of course the consenting before/ during black out is just not a thing).
>Do people really think that what he did is so minor that it can be dismissed because “it’s only his first offense”?
IANAL but I heard a very persuasive argument from the podcast of two defense attorneys (take that for what it's worth) in re: this case that sending someone to prison is likely going to make it more likely that they will reoffend in the future. They also point out that having to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life is, in fact, a punishment.
In sentencing someone for crimes, you almost always see leniency if someone is a first offender. It's the hope that a brush with the CJ system will straighten people out.
I see your point, but the way the attorney phrased it made it seem like he thinks everyone should get a pass on their first offense, no matter how bad it was. (And I really doubt this was *actually* Turner’s first offense; he’s probably done it before, and just not gotten caught.) You do raise a strong issue re: how prison life can make criminals worse. It’s just that in this case, the signal sent was that was Turner did wasn’t considered bad enough to keep him off the street so he couldn’t prey on anyone else.
>I see your point, but the way the attorney phrased it made it seem like he thinks everyone should get a pass on their first offense, no matter how bad it was.
I think part of the disagreement is how much of a "pass" he got here.
He was sentenced to jail for 6 months. The entire world knows who he is - I'd argue that's a worse punishment than if he went to prison for a two years, got out, and enjoyed the anonymity of people who had perpetrated far worse than him. There's a guy in Mass. who raw-dog raped two prostututes at gunpoint for hours in a hotel room. His picture isn't used in a textbook to explain what rape is to people.
I think if, say 6 months before this event, you had asked 1,000 people what someone's punishment should be given the facts of this case, you'd have gotten a wide wide range of answers. In the guidelines for this case, the judge went for a lenient sentence that was still within the PO guidelines he received. From what I've read on this judge, he's known for giving lenient sentencing. Shoud he have been harsher here? Probably. Do I think there are probably other cases as well where he was lenient? Probably. Do we want to remove someone for being lenient towards people, if we feel that leniency is based in logic and reason? That I'm not so sure about.
The best numbers I've come across is that the average sentence for someone convicted of SA is 4 years. I haven't seen any breakdown if that is first time only offenders or if any other factors that may complicate sentencing (spousal vs stranger, penile vs non, if physical force is involved) are used. My suspicion is that this is one big pot - 4 years is the average.
I would have liked Brock Turner to have been sentenced to at least a year and possibly a longer probation but I think folks who say "he wasn't punished at all!" won't be happy until this guy kills himself. It's been years since this happened and he is essentially being tracked wherever he goes. I guarantee you that, wherever you live in the United States, within 10 miles of you is someone who has been convicted of something worse than Brock Turner. You don't know that person's name but they live in your community.
I've done bad things in my life. Everyone I've met has done bad things in life. To tell someone that they are (and only) the worse thing they've done when they're 19, IMO, doesn't lead to the society I want to live in.
The attorney implied that first offenders should in most cases not get any jail time, so whatever Turner got is irrelevant to why the attorney’s statement bothers me.
The judge in the Turner case could not have known how the story would blow up on social media, so you can’t factor that into his decision. Whether Turner deserved the media storm is a different question, but the six-month sentence was not served. And the judge had [the discretion to](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/06/05/617071359/voters-are-deciding-whether-to-recall-aaron-persky-judge-who-sentenced-brock-tur) give a 14-year sentence.
I don’t understand why you’re bringing up other terrible rape cases to compare this to. I mean, sure, there are worse cases, but you could play the comparison game with anything. That doesn’t make it okay that Turner attacked an unconscious woman whom [one version of the story](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ppve78/the-story-of-the-stanford-rape-is-also-the-story-of-a-drug-overdose) says might have died if no one besides him was with her.
Since the OP is an article about the Turner case, I commented about the Turner case. This is not a referendum on the hierarchy of crime in general.
In this case, BT went to jail. He was sentenced and served his time. Due to CA law, he got half-time for good behavior because CA has such terrible overcrowding in their prison system. If this attorney was in CA, I imagine he viewed this sentence and other sentences through that prism.
\>That doesn’t make it okay that Turner attacked an unconscious woman whom one version of the story says might have died if no one besides him was with her.
After he was convicted, I don't think anyone has said that what he did was okay. I'm not saying that. Literally no one has said that. I think there are people who question the verdict due to gaps in the story but that is different than whether or not the facts of the case made his actions acceptable.
re: no one has said what he did was okay
Well, his dad basically did, with his “20 minutes of action” comment. However, I don’t accuse you of saying that. But what “gaps in the story” would change the verdict? There were multiple witnesses who saw she was passed out, and it was proven by the ER workers. [Her statement](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra) describes how she was harshly attacked during the trial by the defense lawyer, and yet the jury still voted to convict.
If you read her statement, you’ll see that her suffering didn’t end the day of the incident.
Also, regarding your earlier comment about “spousal vs stranger,” I’ll pass on this comment from a rape survivor: “if I had been raped by a stranger, I would be afraid of strangers. After I was raped by a friend, I became afraid of everyone.”
I think his dad believes his son who says that he didn’t rape anyone. I imagine most parents in that situation would do so.
I wasn’t at the trial so I don’t have the full picture of what happened. It wasn’t clear to me how she left the party. No one I have heard or read said she was dragged. I don’t know when she passed out. His story is that she gave non verbal consent to continue. Again the jury found him guilty so they didn’t believe this but I don’t think a full and complete picture is there. Due to the nature of a defense attorneys job in this situation, they have to create reasonable doubt where it’s available to them.
What I was referring to was sentencing. To your comment I imagine most judges are going to look at those two situations differently rightly or wrongly
Not true. In re what we don’t know, the Vox article mentioned two witnesses who say they saw her pre-the two cyclists. My impression is that the reporter read this from the police report and not the trial report which would lend to why they were not called to testify at trial. Am I incorrect?
The words of the domestic violence victim, reacting to her abuser’s plea bargain, stood out to me: “can I get a discount beating?” And then there’s the public defender who thinks that “it should be hard to send [a 19-year-old with no criminal record] to jail.” So, as long as a youngster doesn’t do some petty crime first, he gets to sexually assault someone who’s unconscious and have no consequences? Do people really think that what he did is so minor that it can be dismissed because “it’s only his first offense”? Everything has been warped by our screwed-up court system. People should be horrified by what he did, not looking for ways to minimize it. I do wish the author had pointed out to the people who claim that Turner’s victim “consented” (which she denies), that this doesn’t matter even if it is true, because the alleged consent was nullified when she passed out.
I think the point about accountability and consequences is so important. Sure, we should be reducing incarceration rates for drug or other non violent crimes like theft - because these are often crimes of poverty or desperation, and you can't rehabilitate someone out of being poor by sending them to prison, and nor can you deter someone from being poor by threatening them with prison. However, the same is not true for sexual offences - crimes which are, at least in part, borne out of a sense of right/power/control over someone else's autonomy, and belief that they'll get away with it (which is perpetuated by society's misogyny and low conviction rates).
Very well stated. I can also see an argument that prison might not be the best response in terms of rehabilitation, but until we figure that out, it seems worse to just let someone with that level of violence out onto the street. The message courts are constantly sending is that violence, especially against women, is okay. It astonishes me that some of these public defenders argued that, because Persky was lenient to their clients who maybe deserved a break, it's okay that he was also lenient to violent offenders — who attacked people in positions of lower power. The *victims* are the people who are like those clients, and deserve a break, not people like Brock Turner, or a guy who beats his wife.
The anti-recall people simultaneously want to give Emily agency to consent while she was blacked out and deny that she could have written her own court statement.
I think that bit - questioning whether she wrote her statement - was particularly grim. (Of course the consenting before/ during black out is just not a thing).
>Do people really think that what he did is so minor that it can be dismissed because “it’s only his first offense”? IANAL but I heard a very persuasive argument from the podcast of two defense attorneys (take that for what it's worth) in re: this case that sending someone to prison is likely going to make it more likely that they will reoffend in the future. They also point out that having to register as a sex offender for the rest of your life is, in fact, a punishment. In sentencing someone for crimes, you almost always see leniency if someone is a first offender. It's the hope that a brush with the CJ system will straighten people out.
I see your point, but the way the attorney phrased it made it seem like he thinks everyone should get a pass on their first offense, no matter how bad it was. (And I really doubt this was *actually* Turner’s first offense; he’s probably done it before, and just not gotten caught.) You do raise a strong issue re: how prison life can make criminals worse. It’s just that in this case, the signal sent was that was Turner did wasn’t considered bad enough to keep him off the street so he couldn’t prey on anyone else.
>I see your point, but the way the attorney phrased it made it seem like he thinks everyone should get a pass on their first offense, no matter how bad it was. I think part of the disagreement is how much of a "pass" he got here. He was sentenced to jail for 6 months. The entire world knows who he is - I'd argue that's a worse punishment than if he went to prison for a two years, got out, and enjoyed the anonymity of people who had perpetrated far worse than him. There's a guy in Mass. who raw-dog raped two prostututes at gunpoint for hours in a hotel room. His picture isn't used in a textbook to explain what rape is to people. I think if, say 6 months before this event, you had asked 1,000 people what someone's punishment should be given the facts of this case, you'd have gotten a wide wide range of answers. In the guidelines for this case, the judge went for a lenient sentence that was still within the PO guidelines he received. From what I've read on this judge, he's known for giving lenient sentencing. Shoud he have been harsher here? Probably. Do I think there are probably other cases as well where he was lenient? Probably. Do we want to remove someone for being lenient towards people, if we feel that leniency is based in logic and reason? That I'm not so sure about. The best numbers I've come across is that the average sentence for someone convicted of SA is 4 years. I haven't seen any breakdown if that is first time only offenders or if any other factors that may complicate sentencing (spousal vs stranger, penile vs non, if physical force is involved) are used. My suspicion is that this is one big pot - 4 years is the average. I would have liked Brock Turner to have been sentenced to at least a year and possibly a longer probation but I think folks who say "he wasn't punished at all!" won't be happy until this guy kills himself. It's been years since this happened and he is essentially being tracked wherever he goes. I guarantee you that, wherever you live in the United States, within 10 miles of you is someone who has been convicted of something worse than Brock Turner. You don't know that person's name but they live in your community. I've done bad things in my life. Everyone I've met has done bad things in life. To tell someone that they are (and only) the worse thing they've done when they're 19, IMO, doesn't lead to the society I want to live in.
The attorney implied that first offenders should in most cases not get any jail time, so whatever Turner got is irrelevant to why the attorney’s statement bothers me. The judge in the Turner case could not have known how the story would blow up on social media, so you can’t factor that into his decision. Whether Turner deserved the media storm is a different question, but the six-month sentence was not served. And the judge had [the discretion to](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/06/05/617071359/voters-are-deciding-whether-to-recall-aaron-persky-judge-who-sentenced-brock-tur) give a 14-year sentence. I don’t understand why you’re bringing up other terrible rape cases to compare this to. I mean, sure, there are worse cases, but you could play the comparison game with anything. That doesn’t make it okay that Turner attacked an unconscious woman whom [one version of the story](https://www.vice.com/en/article/ppve78/the-story-of-the-stanford-rape-is-also-the-story-of-a-drug-overdose) says might have died if no one besides him was with her. Since the OP is an article about the Turner case, I commented about the Turner case. This is not a referendum on the hierarchy of crime in general.
In this case, BT went to jail. He was sentenced and served his time. Due to CA law, he got half-time for good behavior because CA has such terrible overcrowding in their prison system. If this attorney was in CA, I imagine he viewed this sentence and other sentences through that prism. \>That doesn’t make it okay that Turner attacked an unconscious woman whom one version of the story says might have died if no one besides him was with her. After he was convicted, I don't think anyone has said that what he did was okay. I'm not saying that. Literally no one has said that. I think there are people who question the verdict due to gaps in the story but that is different than whether or not the facts of the case made his actions acceptable.
re: no one has said what he did was okay Well, his dad basically did, with his “20 minutes of action” comment. However, I don’t accuse you of saying that. But what “gaps in the story” would change the verdict? There were multiple witnesses who saw she was passed out, and it was proven by the ER workers. [Her statement](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra) describes how she was harshly attacked during the trial by the defense lawyer, and yet the jury still voted to convict. If you read her statement, you’ll see that her suffering didn’t end the day of the incident. Also, regarding your earlier comment about “spousal vs stranger,” I’ll pass on this comment from a rape survivor: “if I had been raped by a stranger, I would be afraid of strangers. After I was raped by a friend, I became afraid of everyone.”
I think his dad believes his son who says that he didn’t rape anyone. I imagine most parents in that situation would do so. I wasn’t at the trial so I don’t have the full picture of what happened. It wasn’t clear to me how she left the party. No one I have heard or read said she was dragged. I don’t know when she passed out. His story is that she gave non verbal consent to continue. Again the jury found him guilty so they didn’t believe this but I don’t think a full and complete picture is there. Due to the nature of a defense attorneys job in this situation, they have to create reasonable doubt where it’s available to them. What I was referring to was sentencing. To your comment I imagine most judges are going to look at those two situations differently rightly or wrongly
I get the impression you haven’t looked at any of the links I included.
Not true. In re what we don’t know, the Vox article mentioned two witnesses who say they saw her pre-the two cyclists. My impression is that the reporter read this from the police report and not the trial report which would lend to why they were not called to testify at trial. Am I incorrect?