PALO ALTO — In response to a public outcry over the light sentence given to a former Stanford student-athlete convicted of sexual assault, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen Wednesday unveiled legislation that would toughen penalties for sexually assaulting an unconscious person — a crime that can now result in probation instead of prison.
The announcement came on the same day a new online poll showed strong support for recalling the judge who sentenced Brock Turner to county jail.
Currently, Rosen said at a news conference outside the Palo Alto courthouse where Turner’s trial was held, a prison sentence of three to eight years is mandatory for the rape or sexual assault of a conscious person by force. Sexually assaulting an unconscious person, he said, should not be treated less seriously.
“Why — under the law — is a sexual assault of an unconscious woman less terrible than that of a conscious woman?” Rosen asked. “Is it less degrading? Is it less traumatic?”
Rosen’s office wrote the legislation to eliminate the distinction and got Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, and Assemblyman Bill Dodd, D-Napa, to amend an existing measure, Assembly Bill 2888, with Rosen’s language. State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, is a co-author.
Rosen said the victim in the Turner case has gained sympathy from people around the world. But, he said, she deserves more than that. “Let’s give her a legacy that will send the next Brock Turner to prison,” Rosen said.
Turner was convicted in March of three felony counts for assaulting the victim, who was unconscious, outside a frat-house party: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. The bill would apply to the latter two offenses, according to the district attorney’s office.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky agreed with the probation department that there were “unusual circumstances” in the case that warranted jail time and probation — a finding that is allowed under the law. He imposed a six-month county jail sentence on Turner, who will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Rosen’s office had argued for a six-year prison term.
“I fundamentally see a flaw in the law, which is that rape is being treated differently,” Low said. “It created ridiculous incentives for rapists to get their victims intoxicated so they could get off with a lighter sentence because the victim was too drunk to resist.”
But one feminist advocacy group that is backing the judge recall effort, UltraViolet, came out against Rosen’s bill on Wednesday, saying that the judge is the problem — not the state’s sentencing rules.
The mandatory-minimum sentencing proposal “is not only bad policy generally, but also the wrong solution for this case,” Nita Chaudhary, the organization’s co-founder, said in a statement.
Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor who is heading the campaign to recall Persky in 2017, said, “Our focus remains the recall of Judge Persky as a result of his abuse of discretion in this case.”
Previously, two other Assembly members — Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, and Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, introduced legislation that would strengthen California’s definition of rape, aligning it with language used by the FBI and most other states.
Current state law narrowly defines rape as an “act of sexual intercourse” and classifies other types of forced sex acts as sexual assault. Assembly Bill 701 would redefine rape as penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part or object.
According to the new poll — done for Capitol Weekly by Claremont-based Sextant Strategies & Research —— 81 percent of Santa Clara County respondents believe Turner’s sentence was too lenient and 66 percent support efforts to recall Persky.
Support for the recall is strong across all demographic groups, but pollster Jonathan Brown said women and younger voters back the idea by the widest margin, while voters age 65 and older are more split. That could help Persky in an off-year election, where older voters usually turn out in greater numbers.
The survey was conducted online Monday through Wednesday among 776 registered voters whose email addresses are listed in their voter registration files.
While online polls are becoming more popular, Melinda Jackson, a polling expert at San Jose State University, said they aren’t quite as accurate as phone surveys because voters who don’t share their email addresses are automatically excluded.
The California Judges Association on Wednesday issued a statement that criticizes the threatened recall: “It does harm to our constitutional system … to place judges in fear of recall or personal harm before making unpopular decisions that comply with the law. A judge should not be influenced by voices in the community, no matter how communicated, who demand a particular outcome.”
