Brock Turner's jail term ending as fallout from Stanford case continues

The Stanford swimming star convicted of sexually assaulting a woman outside a fraternity party is set to be released from jail Friday, but the grim case and controversial three-month incarceration continue to reverberate.

Brock Turner, now 21, served three months of a six-month sentence shortened by "good behavior" while in the Santa Clara County Jail. The Ohio native, expelled from the prestigious university before completing his freshman year, must serve three years probation and register as a sex offender.

Turner, who claimed the victim consented, could have faced more than a decade in prison on the convictions — assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person and penetration of an unconscious person. The victim's emotional impact statement detailed what she remembered of the horror of Jan. 18, 2015, and underscoring the need for attackers to face consequences.

"The seriousness of rape has to be communicated clearly, we should not create a culture that suggests we learn that rape is wrong through trial and error," she wrote. "The consequences of sexual assault needs to be severe enough that people feel enough fear to exercise good judgment even if they are drunk, severe enough to be preventative."

The impact of the case continues:

• The victim must find a way back to her "normal life."
• The California Legislature sent to Gov. Jerry Brown a bill this week that would mandate tougher sentences in cases where the victim is unconscious or severely intoxicated and thus unable to resist. Turner would have faced three years behind bars under the law.
• Judge Aaron Persky, who cited Turner's age, the fact that he was drunk and thus bore "less moral culpability," and the lack of "significant" prior legal problems in issuing a lenient sentence, faces a recall effort.
• Stanford President John Hennessy called on the campus community to generate solutions that meaningfully change the "campus culture around alcohol" and banned hard liquor from most on-campus student parties.

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The victim wrote that, instead of spending time healing after the assault, she was forced to prepare for court. She wrote of being afraid to go on walks in the evening or attend social events with drinking among friends.

"He is a lifetime sex registrant. That doesn’t expire," she wrote. "Just like what he did to me doesn’t expire, doesn’t just go away after a set number of years. It stays with me, it’s part of my identity, it has forever changed the way I carry myself, the way I live the rest of my life."

Brown has until the end of September to decide the fate of the new law that would close a loophole in sexual assault cases when the victim is unconscious. Assemblymember Bill Dodd, an author of the bill, says beyond sentencing, the bill is about supporting victims and changing the culture on college campuses to help prevent future crimes.

“Sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated victim is a terrible crime and our laws need to reflect that," said Dodd, a Democrat. "Letting felons convicted of such crimes get off with probation discourages other survivors from coming forward and sends the message that raping incapacitated victims is no big deal."

Persky has been on the hot seat since issuing Turner's sentence June 2 — just days before he won a primary by default when he faced no challengers. A similar fate awaits him in the November election.

Stanford law professor Michele Dauber, one of the leaders of the effort to recall Persky, says the Stanford grad won't serve out his new, six-year term. But technically the recall effort can't start until three months into Persky's new term, which doesn't actually begin until January.

Dauber says Persky's foes are using the time to collect the estimated $500,000 she believes it will take just to collect about 80,000 signatures required to begin the recall process.

Critics: Stanford's new alcohol ban won't prevent sexual assaults

"The effort is going extremely well," Dauber told USA TODAY. "We have a lot of endorsements and we have been raising money. We will begin signature collection April 17."

Persky, who recently agreed to stop handling criminal cases, will not go quietly. He has his own website, Retain Judge Persky, and is pressing the argument that judges must be independent and deliberate each decision solely on merit.

"I took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to appease politicians or ideologues," he says. "When your own rights and property are at stake, you want the judge to make a fair and lawful decision, free from political influence."

Efforts to address campus "culture" have been conducted with, at best, mixed results across the nation for years. The Turner case has not made the issue any easier at Stanford, although the school claims the new alcohol rule and other changes are not directly the result of the case.

"I think the students are really, really angry about the sentencing and Stanford's failure to take any responsibility for the culture," Dauber said. Part of the problem, she said, is an attitude of entitlement among many athletes at the school. She cited Turner's own claim that his peers encouraged hard drinking and sexual "hookups."

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The new rules on alcohol, she said, just make things worse by driving hard drinking "underground."

"They are agreeing with Brock Turner that he fell in with the wrong crowd, got drunk and made a mistake," she said. "We definitely need to be doing some things, but what are the best evidence-based policies that won't make matters worse?"

Lisa Lapin, associate vice president of university communications at Stanford, said the school is dedicating resources to preventing sexual assaults. She said the school plans to spend “an additional $2.7 million to sexual assault prevention and education programs, as well as victim support” this year.

The school is continuing to work on improving the culture and wants students to help. President John Hennessy and Provost John Etchemendy stressed student participation in an email to students in March.

"We need new solutions – solutions that reduce risk for students, that reduce the pressure on students to drink, and that meaningfully change our culture around alcohol," they said.