He should be in jail, but this is better than nothing. Before I begin, if, on the off chance you’re unfamiliar with Brock Turner, here’s a quick rundown:
In January of 2015, Turner sexually penetrated an intoxicated and unconscious 22-year-old with his fingers behind a dumpster. Two men came upon the scene and later testified that they stopped him because the woman appeared to be unconscious. As they approached the scene, however, Turner ran. The two men chased Turner down and captured him until the police arrived and arrested Turner on Stanford’s campus. He was booked into the Santa Clara County jail on suspicion of attempted rape and penetration with a foreign object. However, he was released the same day after posting $150,000 bail. Consequently, he was then indicted on five charges: two for rape, two for felony sexual assault, and one for attempted rape. He was eventually convicted on three charges of felony sexual assault. While these convictions have a potential sentence of fourteen years in prison, the prosecutors only recommended six years. Despite this, in June of 2016, Turner was only sentenced to six months, not of state prison, but merely a county jail; then, after this stint, followed by three years of probation. Turner left jail after only three months.
At the time of the trial in 2016, California defined his actions as sexual assault, not rape; furthermore, this led to the string of events that allowed Turner to get off with his heavily scrutinized light sentence. However, after Turner’s conviction, the state passed two new laws expanding the definition of rape to include all forms of nonconsensual sex; thus, if Turner were to be tried today, he would be a legally convicted rapist.
This brings us to the small piece of justice obtained in this case, Brock Turner as the new textbook definition of a rapist. In September 2017, a criminal justice student at Washington State University, Hannah Kendall Schuman, discovered that her Introduction to Criminal Justice textbook had Turner’s face under the subtitle “Rape”. Shuman posted on Facebook, “He may have been able to get out of prison time, but in my Criminal Justice 101 textbook, Brock Turner is the definition of rape, so he’s got that goin for him.”
Under his mugshot, the textbook states: “Brock Turner, a Stanford student who raped and assaulted an unconscious female college student behind a dumpster at a fraternity party, was recently released from jail after serving only three months. Some are shocked at how short this sentence is…”
From an academic point of view, Turner’s case is particularly interesting because it led to an update in California laws. Granted, the laws were clearly long overdue for an update since sexual assault often leads to little to no jail time. This case also shed some light on how race plays into sentencing and the coverage of sexual assault cases, and those who remain infuriated by Turner’s short jail stay are still trying to get Judge Aaron Persky removed from the bench.
Whilst no real justice was served, at least this textbook definition immortalizes Turner for who he really is. His sentencing was an outrage; whilst the way the media portrayed Turner was equally as disgusting. Headlines often highlighted the fact that Turner was a swimmer at Stanford, often using glamour shots of him instead of his mugshot. Since when does being able to swim excuse criminal activity? This man is not a child who got his hand caught in the cookie jar, and that was the extent of his crime – stealing a cookie. Instead, he had scores of people defending his actions, including his father, who wrote a horrific letter about how any punishment for his crime is a “steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.” Well sir, with all due respect, it wasn’t 20 minutes of action, it was 20 minutes of then termed sexual assault, and now termed rape.
While Turner was required to lawfully register as a sex-offender, he wasn’t legally convicted as a rapist. However, despite this complete injustice, at least he will forever be memorialized as a mugshot, next to the rape section of a law textbook, and there’s no getting out of this one with “good behavior”, Brock.
images obtained from Shuman’s Facebook post and NBC