People v. Turner, formally The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner (2015), 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 (referred to in court documents as "Emily Doe"), 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two for rape, two for felony sexual assault, and one for attempted rape, although the two rape charges were later withdrawn.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. In December 2017, Turner appealed his sentence. However, his appeal was declined on August 8, 2018.
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 woman 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 the woman, who 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.