Stanford assault: Santa Clara County district attorney seeks to close loophole in laws that allows for lighter sentences if a victim is unconscious.
A legal loophole that allowed former Stanford University student Brock Allen Turner to get a six-month county jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman last year would be closed under legislation proposed Wednesday by Santa Clara County prosecutors.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said his office has written a bill to ensure that anyone convicted of sexual assault in California will have to serve a state prison term and will not be eligible for probation.
Rosen noted that under state law, perpetrators who sexually assault a
conscious person must serve time in state prison, not county jail, and are ineligible for probation. Those who assault an unconscious person, however, can get a relatively light county jail sentence or even probation — the sentence that Turner’s defense attorneys requested for him after he was convicted of three felonies for assaulting an unconscious woman outside a Stanford fraternity party in January 2015.
“The judge gave the wrong sentence, but he had the legal right to give it,” Rosen said at a news conference on the steps of Santa Clara County Superior Court in Palo Alto, where Turner was convicted and sentenced. His prosecutors sought a six-year term for Turner in state prison.
The current legal discrepancy between sexually assaulting a conscious versus an unconscious person stems from whether the attacker uses force. State law dictates that a perpetrator’s use of force in an assault involving penetration triggers a mandatory prison sentence. However, when a victim is unconscious, he or she is unable to resist and the perpetrator therefore does not have to use force.
“So a perpetrator at a college party who chooses to forcibly rape a conscious victim will go to prison,” Rosen said. “However, a different perpetrator at the same party who chooses to watch and wait for a victim to pass out from intoxication before sexually assaulting her can get probation.”
The proposed legislation would change the law so that someone convicted of assaulting an unconscious person would have to be sentenced to state prison. The bill, AB2888, is sponsored by state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, and Assemblymen Bill Dodd, D-Napa, and Evan Low, D-Campbell.
“Current law actually incentivizes rapists to get their victims intoxicated before assaulting them,” Low said in a statement. “While we can’t go back and change what happened, we can make sure it never happens again.”
Public reaction was swift when Judge Aaron Persky handed down a six-month sentence for Turner, 20, earlier this month. A change.org petition garnered more than 1 million signatures urging the judge’s removal from the bench.
Rosen recently had Persky removed from a case involving a nurse accused of sexually assaulting a sedated patient, citing a lack of confidence that the judge could “fairly participate.” However, Rosen says he does not support efforts to recall the judge.
The woman assaulted by Turner supports the legislation, according to Rosen. While announcing the bill, Rosen quoted from the letter the woman read to Turner during sentencing: “The seriousness of rape has to be communicated clearly. We should not create a culture that suggests that we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error. The consequences of sexual assault need to be severe enough that people feel enough fear to exercise good judgment, even if they are drunk, severe enough to be preventative.”
Rosen said, “We’ve read her letter — now let’s give her back something beyond worldwide sympathy and anger. Let’s give her a legacy that will send the next Brock Turner to prison,” Rosen said.