Stanford sexual assault: judge facing recall campaign over light sentence [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Stanford sexual assault: judge facing recall campaign over light sentence

Stanford law professor leads campaign against judge who gave
six-month sentence to the former swimmer who sexually assaulted
an unconscious woman

Sam Levin in San Francisco and Jo Walters in New York
Monday 6 June 2016 19.11 BST

The victim of a sexual assault by a former Stanford university swimmer said on Monday she was “overwhelmed and speechless” at the deluge of support for her as the judge who gave her attacker a light sentence faced a recall campaign.

Brock Allen Turner, 20, who was convicted sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus, was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation – a punishment that is significantly less severe than the minimum prison time of two years prescribed by state law for his felony offenses.

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The Guardian can also reveal that the judge who gave the former Stanford athlete the light sentence will now face a recall campaign led by a law professor at the elite university who argues the jurist took extraordinary measures to allow the student to avoid prison.

Further scrutiny on the judge’s remarks at sentencing appear to suggest he concluded the defendant had “less moral culpability” because he was drunk, and that a light sentence would be an “antidote” to the anxiety he had suffered from intense media attention on the case.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/06/stanford-sexual-assault-judge-recall