Justices uphold ex-Stanford swimmer’s conviction
SAN JOSE >> Capping a controversial campus assault case that garnered international attention, a California appellate court Wednesday upheld former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner’s conviction, including the felony count that forces him to register for the rest of his life as a sex offender.
Turner can appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. But the high court is considered unlikely to take up the case in light of a 17-page ruling that concluded his conviction was supported by “substantial evidence.”
“The jury could reasonably have inferred from the foregoing evidence that defendant intended to rape Jane 1,” the three-justice panel ruled, finding that Turner “lied to about attempting to run away.”
His lawyer had tried to convince the panel to overturn his client’s conviction on the novel grounds that the athlete wanted “outercourse” with his intoxicated victim, not intercourse.
“Outercourse,” his lawyer Eric S. Multhaup had explained to the three poker-faced justices, is sexual contact while fully clothed. Turner had his clothes on when he was caught by two Swedish graduate students making thrusting motions on top of a half-naked, intoxicated, unconscious woman, his lawyer noted.
Turner testified during his 2016 trial that the woman had agreed to accompany him to his dorm room. But the appellate court noted he never mentioned that to the graduate students or to the detective.
The case led to the extremely rare recall last month of Judge Aaron Persky, who gave Turner what many considered a lenient six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an intoxicated, unconscious woman outside a campus fraternity party in 2015. The June election was the first time in 86 years that voters in California have recalled a sitting judge.
Although Turner wound up serving only three months in jail, he is required under a state law to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life because he was convicted of
attempting to rape an intoxicated person. The jury also found Turner guilty of two counts of digital penetration. He has moved back to Ohio and did not appear at the appellate hearing late last month.
“Brock Turner is a lying unrepentant sex predator who never showed real remorse for sexual assault,” said recall leader Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor. “Turner never deserved the short misdemeanor sentence he received from Judge Persky — a sentence that sent the message that his crimes were not really serious. The appellate Court has now rejected that idea and I think everyone, including Brock Turner, would be better served by accepting the jury’s verdict and moving on.”