Revealing the Impact of Brock Turner
When asked if the six-month jail sentence Brock Turner received was fair, Clinical Professor Herschella Conyers said she thought it was. Professor Jonathan Masur didn’t agree. The two were engaging in a debate at a student-organized lunch talk about sentencing in People v. Turner—a sexual assault case that garnered extensive media attention and public outrage following the release of the victim’s impact statement.
“I think it might be a fine sentence,” Conyers said. “I’m probably in the minority with that opinion, but I looked at the judge’s findings, and I think he did a good job of weighing the pros and cons.”
As Conyers and Masur discussed the consequences of Brock Turner’s sentence during the packed event, their conversation went in unexpected directions—they examined over-incarceration, sex offender registration, privilege, media legislation, and more. It was a challenging subject, student organizers said, but by going beyond the media’s interpretation, the debate expanded what some argue has been a fairly narrow storyline.
“This is a topic that’s been so popular in the media,” said Alison Frost, ’18, the president of the Domestic and Sexual Violence Project and the debate’s moderator. “So many people know the name Brock Turner. But I think very few are aware of some of the more nuanced details of the case. It has broader implications that people going into the legal world should be familiar with.”
The debate was organized by the Domestic and Sexual Violence Project, along with the American Constitution Society and Defenders. The groups hoped Turner’s case would provide the framework for a frank discussion about sentencing in sexual assault cases, and they chose Conyers, a Clinical Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic, and Masur, the John P. Wilson Professor of Law and David and Celia Hilliard Research Scholar, for their respective backgrounds in public defense and criminal law.
Frost began the debate by asking if Turner’s six-month sentence was too lenient (the prosecutors had recommended six years). Conyers, who has worked as a defense lawyer and represented minors for decades, said that Judge Aaron Persky followed the probation officer’s recommendation and that the sentence was certainly legal. More broadly, she added, with the over-incarceration epidemic in the United States, judges ought to assign shorter prison sentences whenever possible.
While Masur agreed that overly harsh sentencing is a serious problem, he didn’t think it applied in Turner’s case.
“In general,” he said, “we are incarcerating too many people for too long for offenses that are not violent and not deserving of that level of punishment. But, that’s not this crime.”
A longer sentence would not only fit the violent nature of Turner’s crime, he added, but also send a message to potential sex offenders that these actions are unacceptable.
“When people like Brock Turner are sentenced to longer terms in prison, it causes other people to look at it and say ‘aha, somebody thinks that’s a really bad thing. I better not do that.’”
Conyers disagreed. Deterrence, she said, is a product of peer policing rather than prison sentences. In our current culture, bystander intervention is devastatingly low, and this reflects the way young men and women think about sexual assault.
“Brock Turner’s not looking at the penal code,” she said. “He doesn’t think it applies to his conduct. We take our cues and change our conduct according to what it is we say to each other every day. What are we going to do to make an environment and a culture that really does deter?”
Conyers added that the sentence was recommended in part because Turner was nineteen years old when he committed the crime. Students and faculty in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic have spent years looking at research suggesting that adolescent criminal activity doesn’t predict future social engagement and conduct.
In response, Masur conceded that age must play a role in sentencing. But, he said, at eighteen, people are old enough to vote, drive, and go to war. If eighteen-year-olds are entrusted with these responsibilities, they should also understand that sexual assault is wrong.
“I think the question is not, ‘Should we have thrown the book at him given that he’s [nineteen] years old?’ but, ‘Should we have given him something that looked like more than a tap on the wrist?’” Masur said.
In order to appreciate the severity of Turner’s sentence, Conyers argued, the public needs to look at more than just his prison time. Three years of probation involves regularly reporting to a probation officer and taking courses. Also, because he was convicted in the state of California, Turner had to register as a sex offender for life.
“I don’t know how registering as a sex offender for the rest of your life is a slap on the wrist,” Conyers said. “It restricts where a person can live. Under the registration law, should someone ever want to marry this man, can he go to school and pick up his kid’s report card?”
Masur and Conyers agreed that it is a failing of the criminal justice system that all sex offenders must register for life in California and many other states.
“I do think it’s wrong that this is a tag that’s going to follow him for the rest of his life,” Masur said. “I believe that people should be able to pay their debt to society and get a fresh start.”
When the subject of victim impact statements came up, Conyers said that this victim’s statement was stunning, and it highlighted the negative impact of the media on the victim, who learned the details of her assault through reading about them in her local newspaper. At the same time, Masur and Conyers agreed that impact statements as well as defendant remorse may demonstrate privilege more than anything else.
“Too frequently, remorse, and whether you’re able to express remorse, is just about whether you have a good lawyer who’s coached you appropriately,” Masur said. He then added, “And it doesn’t necessarily make sense to allow victim impact statements—it privileges people who have education and the ability to express themselves more eloquently, and it devalues the lives of people who are not able to speak in the same way.”
Public outrage following the release of the victim’s impact statement also prompted the California State Legislature to pass two bills—one that would broaden California’s definition of rape, and one that would create a mandatory minimum prison sentence for sexual assault of an unconscious or intoxicated person. To Conyers, the latter bill—which was passed into law this autumn—was a rush to judgement that prevented judicial discretion and added to the issue of over-incarceration.
“I don’t like media legislation,” she said. “And again, this may be the cynic in me, but I firmly believe that five years from now there will be another Brock Turner, and they’re just going to charge him with something lesser.”
After the debate, Frost said she was grateful that so many attended and hoped the discussion led students to think differently about the case.
“One of our overall goals in the Domestic and Sexual Violence Project is to bring in multiple perspectives,” she said. “Part of what attracted me to the Law School in general is the tremendous political diversity we have. And it’s small enough that we’re constantly engaging with those different ideas.”