The bill was introduced amid a national scandal over the sentencing of Brock Turner, the former Stanford student who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in 2015.
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The law change would treat the sexual assault of an unconscious victim the same as the sexual assault of a conscious victim.
“Santa Clara County prosecutors, Bay Area jurors, thousands of Stanford students and more than 1 million UltraViolet members from California to NY agree: Judge Aaron Persky should be removed from the bench”.
“We need to change the law to protect the next Emily Doe from the next Brock Turner,”‘ District Attorney Rosen said during a news event announcing the proposed legislation outside of the Palo Alto courthouse where Turner was tried and convicted.
Rosen characterized the new bill as concrete change demanded by the worldwide reach of the now-viral letter written by the woman in the case, Emily Doe, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. The proposed legislation would require a state prison sentence regardless of the victim’s awareness of the act, Rosen said.
Persky chose a sentence of probation and six months in county jail, and Turner will only have to spend three months behind bars. Under current law, a person convicted of sexually assaulting a conscious person is not eligible for probation, while someone convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious person can be granted probation, as Turner was.
One of the two Assembly members, Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, said she wasn’t aware of the “definition issue” until she learned about Turner’s case.
Not only did the victim’s letter strike a chord with millions, Rosen said it sparked fury and frustration “at those who continue to misconstrue these assaults as sex gone a little too far”.
“The reason that this law is important is it reflects a raising of our consciousness as a society”, he said. It has also led to efforts to remove Persky from the bench. “The California Commission on Judicial Performance should take this opportunity to restore public trust in our courts by removing Judge Persky immediately and declaring that rape apologists have no place in our justice system”.
He said his office would continue to look carefully at every case that comes before Persky, as they do for every judge.
“Her letter left us a painful yet powerful gift that demands something more than just a few minutes of our time”, he said.
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Dubois says Emily Doe has written a rallying cry for those looking for a way to move forward and those seeking change. Like many people across the nation, I was deeply disturbed by the sentence in the Brock Turner case.
