Brock Turner’s light sentence—just six months, at the behest of Judge Aaron Persky—was disturbing to at least one of the jurors deliberating the case, according to the Palo Alto Weekly.
The juror told the paper that he was “absolutely shocked and appalled” by the ruling, and confirmed that he wrote the following missive to Judge Persky:
“After the guilty verdict I expected that this case would serve as a very strong deterrent to on-campus assaults, but with the ridiculously lenient sentence that Brock Turner received, I am afraid that it makes a mockery of the whole trial and the ability of the justice system to protect victims of assault and rape,” the juror wrote to Persky. “Clearly there are few to no consequences for a rapist even if they are caught in the act of assaulting a defenseless, unconscious person.”
“It seems to me that you really did not accept the jury’s findings. We were unanimous in our finding of the defendant’s guilt and our verdicts were marginalized based on your own personal opinion,” the letter said.
The juror told the Palo Alto Weekly that he “felt that the judge had just ignored much of what the jurors said,” and that the letter read by the woman who was raped “exemplified the impact (the assault) had on her.”
Since Persky’s verdict, at least ten prospective jurors have refused to serve under him. As Jezebel has written, Persky has made similarly controversial judgments in the past.
Image via Stanford University’s Department of Public Safety.