When I was in college in the 80’s raging meant drinking or partying. Raging party. Raging drunk. Wild or out of control, basically. Or, to rage at a party.
“Rage” means to really get blotto from booze or drugs. Hard “partying.” So, Turner and his sibling seem familiar with the activity, apparently.
I am guessing swim parents means this.
https://swimswam.com/8-swim-parents-see-local-swim-meets/
Possibly #3.
“. Ari Gold. This parent is part authority figure, part business manager. They know for a fact that their kid is going to the Olympics. Which one? All of them. They have one eye on their smartphone seeking out prospective endorsement deals and the other on potential areas where the brand (a.k.a. the product, the money, the swimmer) can vertically integrate. The parent-agent is frequently locked in a daydream of the potential millions their 7 year old is bound to make”
If you google Brock Turner complaint, you can read the complaint against Brock Turner.
Brock Turner is a House of Lies.
I wish I could like this post five times.
I grew up in a smallish town in the South. Lots of people drank a lot. Partly because there aren’t too many things to do. I’m sure the same is true in small and medium sized towns everywhere.
I do think a lot of people in more urban areas and/or people on the coasts would assume that kids in flyover country are innocent and sheltered. I’m guessing Brock and his lawyer st were counting on that assumption with his letter. That the judge would buy into this whole sheltered Midwestern image without a second thought. Seems they may have been right.
In the California Penal Code, “rape” is defined in sections 261 and 263. The sexual penetration crimes that Turner was convicted of are defined in section 289 (subsections (d) and (e) are the relevant ones in Turner’s case). The penalties are the same (3, 6, or 8 years in prison), and the sexual penetration crimes are considered equivalent to rape by the USDOJ definition. It does appear that the definition of rape in 263 requires an additional hurdle:
The “outrage to the person and feelings of the victim” are not required for the sexual penetration crimes. Presumably, this means that it would be easier to convict someone of sexual penetration than for “rape”. But the crime is functionally equivalent to rape, and the penalties are the same. But if you want to be legalistic about the wording, you can call Turner a “sexual penetrator” instead of “rapist”. Same thing in a functional sense.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/calawquery?codesection=pen
In the California Penal Code, sexual battery is defined in section 243.4. Turner was not charged or convicted of this crime.
That’s a great video in post 826.
@ucbalumnus - you keep quoting statutes out of context. You should know that the US Supreme Court declared CA’s determinate sentencing scheme unconstitutional and held that courts could impose the maximum sentences in the upper ranges ONLY if the jury makes certain factual findings beyond the elements of the offense which the jury did not do here (and was not asked to do so here, so weren’t permitted to do so here). Also, you need to know that there are all sorts of very complicated requirements that mandate that courts take other factors into account, beyond the determinate sentences stated in the statute, including court rules that REQUIRE courts to consider probation as an element of the sentence. The whole scheme is so complicated that they have a separate agency do the initial analysis and make recommendations. And there are all sorts of constitutional requirements as to when sentences must be concurrent and when they can be consecutive. It really is NOT just a matter of quoting a single statute, and it is misleading to do so. I wouldn’t presume to provide detailed specifics about how the scheme works because I do not specialize in this area (although I do have some criminal trial experience).
To repeat what I’ve said above: I think the sentence the judge imposed stinks. But I’m getting so frustrated by the amount of misleading information that is presented regarding CA law.
Why is that relevant? The prosecution did not ask for upper end sentences, and the judge imposed a sentence below the lower end sentence. Or are you saying that the sentences listed in the Penal Code are completely irrelevant to the sentences that those convicted of the crimes actually are sentenced to?
Yes, when all the jury finds is the elements of the offense, the maximum range is irrelevant. Unless additional factors are present beyond the elements of the offense, and only when those factors are found by the jury is the maximum sentence relevant. I’m simplifying because I have no desire to do free legal work and present a comprehensive analysis just to correct misleading statements. But, in essence, if all the prosecution proves are the elements of the offense, and that’s all the jury finds, the mid-level is the maximum sentence. But that’s just the start of the analysis.
That’s just one example of why it is misleading to continually quote an individual statute out of context.
You seem to be implying in all of these posts that the judge cld have imposed the maximum sentence if he wanted to. No he could not. That would have been unconstitutional.
I don’t think enough is being made of the fact that Judge Persky himself was a Stanford athlete, captain of the lacrosse team. Lacrosse at Stanford was a club sport, not a varsity sport, but nonetheless engaged in high-level intercollegiate competition.
I don’t buy for a minute that the judge was taken in by Turner’s “naive small-town Midwesterner” argument. I think this is just about circling the wagons of privilege and entitlement. Judges are professionally obligated to be impartial, but they’re human. They have empathy. In this case, the Judge’s empathy clearly lay with the perpetrator of the crime, not the victim. Why? Well, it may or may not have been a conscious choice on his part, but I just think Persky identified with a young white male athlete at his own elite alma mater who had enormous potential. Persky imagined himself, or one of his lax bros or another Stanford athlete of his acquaintance, in a similar situation—and given the attitudes of sexual entitlement, and yes, the rape culture that exists among college athletes, Persky almost certainly knew of similar cases that never came to trial. He didn’t want to ruin the young man’s life, so he let him off with little more than a slap on the wrist. But does anyone doubt for a minute that if the perpetrator of the exact same crime had been a young black high school dropout from West Oakland, the judge would have handed down a much stiffer sentence? It’s white privilege, class privilege, the privileges and coddled entitlements of the gifted athlete all tied together in a tidy little package. And it’s nauseating, a perversion of justice. In my opinion, Judge Persky has utterly failed at handing down impartial justice. He’s disqualified himself from further service on the bench. He has to go.
Except the Public Defender and deputy PDs who appear before the judge every day say that they believe that their minority and underprivileged clients WOULD have received the same sentence under the same circumstances as this case. I just don’t see how you can ignore the experience of the lawyers who have the day-to-day interaction with the judge and who have the highest incentive to suss out that kind of bias.
And I agree the sentence was wrong. I really do.
Edited to add: if you really think that the sentence was a perversion of justice – an abuse of the judge’s discretion – then why aren’t you confident that it can be fixed on appeal? The prosecution can appeal a sentence that they claim was unauthorized by law.
Potential Jurors Refuse To Serve Judge In Stanford Sex Assault Case
Good.
I think the more precise issue that people are struggling with is the use of probation to the extent that it dilutes the sentence that was imposed to Brock Turner effectively serving 3 or 4 months.
I don’t think too many people, if any, were arguing for the maximum sentence.
Are there statutes in CA that require that probation is part of sentencing?
I’d like to know if anyone’s done the research to find examples of this judge imposing similar sentences for minorities/underprivileged people convicted of similar crimes?
I also don’t agree with the “most men” statement, said as sister of 3 brothers, and mother of one. I just recently had a talk with my son newly returned after his freshman year in which he did overindulge. We talked about this idea of “most men” and how it compared with his perception among the student population he encountered (state flagship, big football scene). His response was instant " No, Mom!! God, no!"
I remembered this YouTube circulating in response to Stuebenville rape.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxv5WCWivM&sns=em
Probation is discretionary - see Professor Dauber’s memo to the judge linked in #292 for discussion of what the legal standards are surrounding that discretion.
It is obvious that I don’t understand how laws and sentences work. If people are outraged about the 6 month sentence being too short, why is it seeming to be reduced to 3 months automatically?