People v. Turner
People v. Turner, formally The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner, was a criminal case in which Brock Allen Turner was convicted by jury trial of three counts of felony sexual assault.
On January 18, 2015, on the Stanford University campus, Turner, then a 19-year-old student athlete at Stanford, sexually assaulted 22-year-old Chanel Miller while she was unconscious. Two graduate students intervened and held Turner in place until police arrived. Turner was arrested and released the same day after posting $150,000 bail.
Turner was initially indicted on five charges: two for rape, two for felony sexual assault, and one for attempted rape, although the two rape charges were later withdrawn. On February 2, 2015, Turner pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. The trial concluded on March 30, 2016, with Turner convicted of three charges of felony sexual assault. On June 2, 2016, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail followed by three years of probation. Additionally, Turner was obliged to register as a sex offender for life and to complete a rehabilitation program for sex offenders.
On September 2, 2016, Turner was released after serving three months, which was half of his sentence, for good behavior. Turner filed an appeal of his conviction and sentence in 2017, but it was denied.
Chanel Miller's victim impact statement to the court, on June 2, 2016, was widely disseminated by international media outlets. There was also widespread criticism of what was seen as a light sentence given by Judge Persky, and he was recalled by county voters in June 2018. The case influenced the California legislature to require prison terms for rapists whose victims were unconscious, and to include digital penetration in the definition of rape. In September 2019, Miller relinquished her anonymity and released an autobiography entitled Know My Name: A Memoir in which she discusses the assault, trial, and aftermath.
Background
Brock Allen Turner was born August 1, 1995, in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from Oakwood High School in 2014. At the time of his arrest, Turner was a 19-year-old freshman at Stanford University, enrolled on a swimming scholarship.Before sentencing, the prosecution filed a memo with the court describing Turner's history of drug and alcohol use at Stanford and earlier in high school. It recounted that police found photos and messages on Turner's cell phone that indicated extensive drug use, including LSD, ecstasy, marijuana extracts, and excessive alcohol. Turner was arrested in 2014 for possession of alcohol while under legal age.
By the conventions of California courts and U.S. media, the woman Turner was convicted of assaulting was called "V01" in the redacted police report on the incident, "Jane Doe" in the indictment, and "Emily Doe" and "Jane Doe 1" by local and regional newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Stanford Daily and the Palo Alto Weekly. At the time of her assault, Doe was a 22-year-old alumna of a different college.
The assault
Caught in the act
Two Swedish graduate students, Peter Lars Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, were cycling on the Stanford campus at about 1:00 a.m., on January 18, 2015, when they spotted the assault taking place. According to Arndt and Jonsson, they surprised Turner behind a dumpster as he was on top of an unconscious 22-year-old Chanel Miller, whose dress had been pulled up to expose her genitals, her underwear and cell phone having been dropped beside her. Jonsson and Arndt saw Turner thrust his hips into Miller, whom the two men observed appeared to be unconscious. Jonsson testified that he confronted Turner and asked him, "What the fuck are you doing? She's unconscious." According to Jonsson, Turner quickly rose and attempted to flee the scene. As Arndt briefly went to determine whether she was breathing, Jonsson chased Turner, tripped him and held him down around away from the dumpster, asking "What are you smiling for?" Later, responding to the assistant District Attorney's questions during the trial, Turner testified that he was laughing because he found the situation ridiculous. Arndt then joined the chase, helping to pin Turner down while a third bystander called sheriff's deputies. When the authorities arrived, they arrested Turner on suspicion of attempted rape.According to a deputy sheriff who described the victim as unconscious at the scene, when Miller arrived at the hospital, she did not respond to shouting and being shaken by the shoulders. She regained consciousness at. She later testified at Turner's trial that at the time she regained consciousness, she had pine needles in her hair and on her body, and dried blood on her hands and elbows. In an interview with police, she said she did not recall being alone with a man during the night and that she did not consent to any sexual activity. At the hospital, she was found to have abrasions and erythema on her skin. One nurse who administered a sexual assault response team examination at the hospital determined that she had experienced significant trauma and penetrating trauma.
Turner and Miller had attended a party at Kappa Alpha Order fraternity earlier in the night. Her sister testified in the trial that Turner, a man previously unknown to Miller, had approached her twice and attempted to kiss her, but that she pulled away. She also testified that she never saw Turner and her sister at the party. According to a police report compiled in the morning after the incident, Turner at first told police that he met Miller outside the fraternity house and left with her. He also stated he did not know her name and "stated that he would not be able to recognize her if he saw her again."
After his arrest, Turner told police that he met Miller at the Kappa Alpha house, they "drank beer together," "walked away from the house holding hands," and that he took off her clothes and fondled her while she rubbed his back. Turner then said he got nauseous and told her he needed to vomit. Turner said he got up and started to walk away to throw up, and heard another person saying something to him which he could not understand, then heard the same person talking to another person in a foreign language. Turner initially denied but later admitted that he ran from the two Swedish graduate students before being tackled. During his trial testimony, Turner stated that he and Miller drank beer together, danced and kissed at the party, and agreed to go back to his room. Turner stated that Miller slipped on a slope behind a wooden shed, then Turner got down to the ground and started kissing her. Turner stated he then asked her if she wanted him to "finger" her, to which she said yes. He stated that he "fingered" her for a minute as they were kissing, then they started "dry humping." Turner testified that he stumbled down an incline where he was confronted by Jonsson and Arndt, who were saying things like "You're sick" and "Do you think that's OK?" Turner testified that he did not know what they were talking about. Turner stated that he fled when Jonsson tried to put him in an armlock.
Both prosecuting Attorney Alaleh Kianerci and Miller stated that Turner's narrative during trial testimony was fabricated. Kianerci argued to the jury, "He's able to write the script because she has no memory. But just because he wrote the script doesn't mean that... knowledgeable jurors have to believe it." The victim described Turner's testimony as presenting "a strange new story, almost sounded like a poorly written young adult novel."
Alcohol
In his statements, Turner described initially drinking five Rolling Rock beers and two swigs of Fireball whiskey in a friend's room, and then having more beer later, reaching a total of nine drinks.Both Turner and Miller were tested at the hospital for blood alcohol content. Turner's was estimated to have been 0.171% at He testified that he did remember what happened that night.
Miller's blood alcohol concentration was measured in a hospital several hours after the assault at 0.12%, and doctors estimated her intoxication level at 1 a.m., the estimated time of the assault, to have been around 0.22%, or 0.242–0.249%. She told the police that she did not remember the events from some point after her arrival at the party until she woke up more than three hours later in the hospital. Shortly before, Miller phoned her boyfriend and left a voicemail message, which later would be entered as evidence by the prosecution. The Palo Alto Weekly described it as "almost entirely incomprehensible". A juror later cited it as particularly strong evidence that she was not in a fit state to give consent.
The blood alcohol estimates for Turner and Miller for 1 a.m. were made by a supervising criminalist for Santa Clara County using nominally hypothetical situations.
Turner admitted to only limited prior experience with alcohol as a putative mitigating factor. However, evidence recovered from his cell phone texts recorded in the year before his 2015 arrest showed that he had extensively discussed his use of alcohol. His text messages also revealed use of illegal drugs. In 2014, Turner had been arrested on campus for underage drinking.