PALO ALTO — A former Stanford athlete was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting an unconscious intoxicated woman outside an on-campus fraternity party in a case that helped increase pressure on colleges nationwide to do more to prevent assaults and punish offenders.
Brock Turner, 20, was convicted of three felony charges: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the case helps make the distinction clear between consensual sex and sexual assault.
“Drunk means no,” Rosen said. “Passed out means no.”
The jury deliberated for less than two days after hearing both Turner and the victim testify over the course of the eight-day trial. As the verdict was read, the Ohio native wearing a navy blazer looked down, and his mother wailed and stomped her foot.
The eight men and four women on the jury left the courthouse without commenting, as did Turner and his family.
Turner, who voluntarily withdrew from Stanford after his arrest early last year, will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Judge Aaron Persky set sentencing for June 2. In the meantime, Turner, who had aspired to swim in the Olympics, remains free on $150,000 bail.
Prosecutor Alaleh Kianerci contended that Turner knew the woman was extremely drunk and purposely took advantage of her. The assault was a crime of opportunity that takes place too often on college campuses, Kianerci said in her closing argument.
“He may not look like a rapist,” she said, “but he is the face of campus sexual assault.”
The verdict comes after campuses across the country drew federal scrutiny for their response to campus safety and the threat of sexual assault in the past two years. At one point, the federal Office for Civil Rights was investigating more than 90 colleges nationwide, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and the University of Southern California.
Stanford convened a task force made up of students, faculty and staff, which late last year recommended ways to enhance the university’s educational efforts about sexual assault, increase support for victims and improve its policies and disciplinary processes for reported cases.
Turner was arrested Jan 18, 2015, immediately after two Stanford graduate students who were bicycling by a Kappa Alpha fraternity party about 1 a.m. caught sight of him on the ground outside, thrusting his hips atop an unconscious, partially clothed woman. Outside the courthouse, Kianerci credited bicyclists Peter Jonsson and Carl Arndt for the success of the case and lauded the victim for braving public embarrassment and testifying.
Turner testified that the Palo Alto woman, who was 22 at the time, was awake and conscious throughout their encounter and that he never intended to rape her.
But the woman did not wake for at least three hours and had a blood-alcohol level more than three times the legal limit. Turner acknowledged on the stand that she was “very drunk” but testified she was “no more drunk than anybody else” at the party.
Yet shortly before the 1 a.m. incident, the woman had left an incoherent message on her boyfriend’s voice mail, Kianerci noted.
Turner’s blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit, but he testified he could walk and talk normally. At the time of the incident, he was a member of the Stanford swim team, but did not belong to Kappa Alpha.
The woman was in tears as she testified that she woke up in the hospital with pine needles in her disheveled hair, dried blood on her hands and elbows and no memory of meeting Turner or being hospitalized.
But Turner said the woman had agreed to accompany him to his dorm room, a mere 10 minutes or so after the two began dancing together and kissing at the fraternity party. As they walked outside holding hands, he said, she slipped and they fell, then started kissing on the ground near an outdoor trash bin. He testified that she said “yes” when he asked her if he could touch her genitals and that he did for a minute. He said he asked her if she liked it and that she replied “uh huh.”
He told the jury he then began to feel sick from the seven beers and two sips of whiskey he’d drunk, so he stumbled away. Suddenly, one of the bicyclists came at him for no reason, he said, and he decided to run in fear.
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.
