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Brock Turner Loses Appeal To Overturn Sexual Assault Conviction


Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, who served just three of his six-month sentence in jail for assaulting an unconscious woman in 2015, will not have his conviction overturned.

Following weeks of arguments and deliberations, Turner learned his fate when an appeals court refused to overturn his felony conviction on three counts, stemming from a case that lead to an outcry about lenient sentences, white privilege and how the justice system handles sexual assault cases. “We are not persuaded,” the justices wrote in response to arguments made by Brock’s attorney’s. In 2016, Turner was found guilty of intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person and penetration of an unconscious person.

Last month, Turner’s lawyer Eric Multhaup argued that there was “a lack of sufficient evidence to support three convictions” against Turner in his assault of the victim, who came to be known as Emily Doe.

Even more specifically, according to CNN, Multhaup, raised issue about the timing of Emily Doe’s unconscious state. The defense also attempted to poke holes in Turner’s “intent to rape” conviction, arguing that because the former athlete was “fully clothed and engaged in forms of sexual conduct other than intercourse,” it would “negate an inference of intent to rape.” In a controversial move, the defense argued that Turner’s actions amounted to sexual “outercourse”, a term that spurred multiple headlines and conversations online.

Michele Dauber, the Stanford law professor who spearheaded the successful effort to have Judge Aaron Persky recalled from the bench for sentencing Turner to six months, spoke to Glamour about what the rejection of Turner’s appeal means for sexual assault victims and the justice system going forward. “Persky’s sentence sent the message that his crimes were not serious. The Appellate Court has now rejected that idea, as have the voters,” she said via email.

Every criminal defendant has the right to appeal, she said, but she did take issue with some of the arguments Turner’s defense chose to use in court. “Rather than arguing there were legal errors in the trial… he continued to argue that Doe consented and continued to blame the victim. He also advanced his ridiculous ‘outercourse’ argument, which was just offensive.”

So is this another win for the #MeToo movement? Dauber wouldn’t say directly, but she is moving forward with more initiatives to help women. “The recall of Judge Persky was a huge win for the #MeToo movement because it took the legitimate anger of women over sexual assault and harassment and transformed it into electoral victory,” she told Glamour. “I am launching a project with the Feminist Majority that will continue the work of ensuring that violence against women is a voting issue.”

“Women are 51 percent of the registered voters in this country, meaning we do not have to accept a state of affairs in which the crimes and offenses that we experience and which interfere with our ability to achieve equality in society are not treated seriously. Our goal in the Recall Persky campaign, and as we move forward through these new organizational forms, is to make sure that these issues are addressed at the ballot box.”

Turner’s sentence, and the decision to reject his appeal, means he must continue to register as a sex offender for life.





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Brock Turner Is The Literal Definition Of 'Rape' Thanks To New Textbook


Brock Turner’s prison stay may have only lasted three months, but this textbook is forever.

If you need a refresher, Turner was the so-called “Stanford Rapist” caught sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster on campus. The trial followed a sadly predictable pattern: Turner blamed his actions on Stanford’s “party culture,” and his father, in a letter to the judge pleading for leniency, lamented that his son was once “excited to buy a big ribeye steak …. Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist.”

Turner was eventually cleared of rape charges, but was convicted on three other felony charges and is now a registered sex offender. He was sentenced to just six months in prison—and was released after three.

Enter two textbook authors, University of Colorado-Denver School of Public Affairs professors Dr. Mary Dodge and Dr. Callie Rennison. They’re making sure Turner eternally pays for his crimes by making his face the very definition of “rape.”

“He may have been able to get out of prison time but in my Criminal Justice 101 textbook, Brock Turner is the definition of rape, so he’s got that going for him,” Hannah Kendall Shuman, a freshman at Washington State University, wrote in the caption of her now-viral photo of the textbook.

Shuman told HuffPost she found the image inside the pages of her textbook, “Introduction to Criminal Justice: Systems, Diversity, and Change 2nd Edition.”

As page 20 of the textbook reads:

“A recent highly publicized example is that of rapist Brock Turner.
Turner, a student at Stanford University, was caught in the act, and
ultimately convicted of three felony charges: assault with intent to
rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person
with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person
with a foreign object… Turner’s victim was unconscious during the
attack, as it happened behind a trash container outside of the Kappa
Alpha fraternity house on campus.”

While the book simply gives an overview of the case, it does throw in the following conversation starter in the caption under Turner’s photo: “Some are shocked at how short this sentence is. Others who are more familiar with the way sexual violence has been handled in the criminal justice system are shocked that he was found guilty and served time at all. What do you think?”

For Shuman, a student in Criminal Justice 101, the answer is clear.

“I didn’t think anyone of status or wealth would ever want to bring him up again, it seemed like America just wanted to act as if he never happened,” she told HuffPost. “I’m glad his name is resurfacing.”

The authors have yet to publicly comment on the textbook’s new internet fame (Glamour has reached out for comment), Rennison previously spoke about the importance of representation in textbooks when she was awarded the Bonnie S. Fisher Victimology Career Award from the American Society of Criminology in 2016. Then, Rennison said, “Existing criminal justice books have focused on three elements: cops, courts and corrections. They speak little about victims, reflecting how they have effectively been in the shadows of our criminal justice system.”



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