Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Askias » Sun Jun 05, 2016 12:29 am

aviel wrote:The United States has the highest prison population in the world, and the approximately the highest per capita prison population in the world. This is despite the fact that we don't at all have the highest rate of convictions in the world -- meaning that our high incarceration rate is due, at least in part, to the unusual length of our sentences. So, when advocating a longer sentence, you have to overcome a substantial presumption that the original sentence is too long already.

Disagreed.

I will grant you the assumption that US sentences are too long, though I'll note that the only reason given for that is the fact that they're higher than other countries, which is hardly an objective scale.

An overall high sentence rate may not apply equally in all cases. Drug offenses, forming a significant portion of criminal convictions and around 20% of prison inmates according to your source, are infamous for being vastly oversentenced, but other misguided attempts to apply the 'broken window'-theory have led to higher sentences for other low-level crimes like petty theft and vandalism. Sexual assault, by contrast, has a particular history of being underprosecuted, underconvicted, and undersentenced. Although that, on the whole, has changed a lot for the better (I recall reading that the UK overall gives equal sentences for rape and manslaughter), we should at least be careful in assuming a general trend will apply to all criminal offenses.

Secondly, if I were to grant the assumption that the average rape sentence is too long, the average rape sentence without prior sexual assault convictions lies in the ballpark of 80 months, with around half that on average served, compared to the 6 in this case. The mere fact that on average sentences may be high doesn't make that one has to look at a sentence that with minor accomodations wouldn't interfere with a school year and assume it's too high, merely because that's a trend that applies to all crimes. Of course such a sentence could be justified by circumstances (even be high considering circumstances), but following that path it's not illogical to seek justification for an unusually low sentence, not assume a high one.

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aviel wrote:I don't understand this argument. How would longer sentencing him to longer than six months solve any of these problems? As far as I know, a longer sentence wouldn't make him more willing to repent afterwards, wouldn't make him less likely to offend in the future,

It would stop a rapist from raping for longer.

To SandTea: You think no rape occurs in prison?
To aviel: We can say that of any sentence of any lenght, as well as the idea of prison in and of itself. There are the aspects of prevention (overly short sentencing will rob the justice system of their preventive effect) and even signalling (a very short sentence can be interpreted as the legal system marking this as not a big deal). There's a long debate that can be had about the point of prisons. I'll back Carrie's question: what would you say is appropriate?
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Jun 05, 2016 5:11 am

CarrieVS wrote:Perhaps because it doesn't follow automatically that the standard sentences for all crimes are too high - indeed I've heard it said, though I did not fact-check the claim, that in the US sentences for violent crimes are unusually low, supposedly because sentences for things like drug offences are too high, meaning there's no room in prisons for rapists and murderers.

The FiveThirtyEight article to which I linked was exactly about this; even if you discounted drug offenses entirely, this would still be a problem. So it isn't just that we have unusually harsh drug sentences; we have a problem for sentencing with all crimes.

Askias wrote:I will grant you the assumption that US sentences are too long, though I'll note that the only reason given for that is the fact that they're higher than other countries, which is hardly an objective scale.

Unless you're arguing that sentencing needs to be harsher in every other country, which I doubt you are, then it's a perfectly reasonable scale. Absent that, there are general arguments that harsher sentences don't have an additional deterrent effect, but if we can accept this premise for now then that works too.

An overall high sentence rate may not apply equally in all cases. Drug offenses, forming a significant portion of criminal convictions and around 20% of prison inmates according to your source, are infamous for being vastly oversentenced, but other misguided attempts to apply the 'broken window'-theory have led to higher sentences for other low-level crimes like petty theft and vandalism. Sexual assault, by contrast, has a particular history of being underprosecuted, underconvicted, and undersentenced. Although that, on the whole, has changed a lot for the better (I recall reading that the UK overall gives equal sentences for rape and manslaughter), we should at least be careful in assuming a general trend will apply to all criminal offenses.

The FiveThirtyEight article indicated that it was an issue for violent offenses as well as drug offenses. I absolutely agree that the problem could be specific to certain kinds of crime and not others -- but absent evidence, I don't see a reason to assume it's not a problem for rape when it is for pretty much every kind of crime. I didn't say that it was impossible that a harsher sentence was warranted, just that there's a substantial presumption in favor of shorter sentencing that you have to overcome first.

Secondly, if I were to grant the assumption that the average rape sentence is too long, the average rape sentence without prior sexual assault convictions lies in the ballpark of 80 months, with around half that on average served, compared to the 6 in this case.

If you can get me a link indicating that the average sentence in these cases is about 80 months, then I agree that that would qualify as substantial evidence that this particular sentence was likely too short.

To aviel: We can say that of any sentence of any lenght, as well as the idea of prison in and of itself. There are the aspects of prevention (overly short sentencing will rob the justice system of their preventive effect) and even signalling (a very short sentence can be interpreted as the legal system marking this as not a big deal). There's a long debate that can be had about the point of prisons. I'll back Carrie's question: what would you say is appropriate?

I agree that point can be made about pretty much all sentences, and I think it has a lot of merit for most sentences in the United States. I'm not personally sure what's appropriate, but given that we know that our ridiculous incarceration rate isn't really reducing crime, something that brought us closer to an an international (or at least OECD) average would probably be a lot more suitable.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Jun 05, 2016 6:16 am

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/division.html

The fact that the US incarceration rate is so high indicates that there is a problem (more likely several problems) with sentencing. The fact that this is true even when drug crimes are left out indicates that the problem is caused by more than just our punitive stance toward drug offenses. It does not follow, however, that it's reasonable to presume the sentence is too high in every single case, irrespective of the plain facts of said case.

In my home state, back in 1994 we passed a ballot measure called Measure 11, that mandated 10+ year sentences for a variety of violent crimes, from murder to simple assault or battery. The intended consequence was to keep hardened, dangerous criminals off the streets, and the unintended consequence was to put a lot of high schoolers and young adults in jail for over a decade for getting into relatively minor fights. The same year, California passed a three-strikes law that mandated 25 to life for committing three felonies--unsurprisingly, until the law was amended in 2012 this ensnared plenty of check forgers and shoplifters as well as the chronically violent gang members the law's proponents had in mind. It's definitely true that the sentencing problem in the US extends well beyond just drug offenses, but that doesn't mean we have to presume that 6 months is too long a sentence for an unrepentant rapist.


However, since I suspect only data will do...I'm having trouble finding remotely recent figures for the US. According to this DOJ study the average sentence for sexual assault in 1992 was 72 months, or six years. But even though it comes as a continual shock to me, 1992 was over twenty years ago.

However, the average rape sentence in the UK was eight years as of 2010, according to the Ministry of Justice.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Askias » Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:30 pm

Crimson847 wrote:However, since I suspect only data will do...I'm having trouble finding remotely recent figures for the US. According to this DOJ study the average sentence for sexual assault in 1992 was 72 months, or six years. But even though it comes as a continual shock to me, 1992 was over twenty years ago.

The same document gives ''rape'' as 117 months. Congressional testimony in relation to the 1994 Crime Bill had a non-representative study of sexual assault convictions. I call the sample non-representative because it was limited to Federal courts, which only have jurisdiction on rapes committed in federal land (such as militairy bases) or Indian Tribal territory, meaning the pool was mostly Native American (71%). It did differentiate between criminal history (finding that a convict with no history of sexual assault received an average sentence of 112 months (around 80% of the average sentence), compared to 191.7 for convicts with priors), but by then the pool was so small that no conclusion can reasonably be drawn from it, even if you'd find 22 year old information collected because of an upcoming significant change relevant. The sentence lengths are certainly not applicable, your opinion may vary whether the ratios could have some value.

Getting further down with regard to the USA fragments the data into more broad catagories (such as sexual assault - that still differs from country to country).

However, the average rape sentence in the UK was eight years as of 2010, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The UK's official guidelines gives a starting point of 7 years (84 months), without accounting for prior convictions or aggrevating circumstances such as (but not limited to) (threats of) bodily harm, forced entry, or an STD being transmitted, but including use of alcohol (page 11, catagory 3, section B. If use of alcohol is discounted, move to 5 years, or 60 months). The lowest guideline for rape I'm aware of is my own country, which is 36 months without possibility of parole, for a single offense (by a legal adult) without any priors. I am not aware of any country that would accept 6 months without serious mitigating circumstances, hence why searching for them seems reasonable to me.

A list of convictions within England and Whales from 2005 to 2014 by year has been released under the Freedom of Information Act. You can find the release here and go to ''Offenders convicted of rape and previous convictions: tables 1 to 6'', or click here for a direct link. Table 5a shows a steady rise in sentence lenght between 2005 and 2014 (moving up from 81.7 to 119 months), but table 6 shows that the average time served has barely changed, actually decreasing slightly to around 54 months in 2014. Around 20% of rape convictions have at least one prior conviction for rape or attempted rape (table 1), and around half have previously been convicted of sexual assault (table 3), so I believe they shouldn't be used as a benchmark here.

aviel wrote:The FiveThirtyEight article to which I linked was exactly about this; even if you discounted drug offenses entirely, this would still be a problem. So it isn't just that we have unusually harsh drug sentences; we have a problem for sentencing with all crimes.

The article mentions the USA has high sentences for nondrug sentences, as well as a higher rate of violent offenses such as murder. One, the latter datapoint would result in a higher incarceration rate even if standards were evened, unless the USA goes lighter on murder to compensate for their high number of convictions. Secondly, initatieves such as the one Crimson mentioned count as ''nondrug sentences'', and any oversentencing there creates wiggle room for other crimes. The article doesn't say ''all crimes''. Thirtly, what Crimson said about fallacy of division. I didn't expect to have to demonstrate that a regular rape sentence is higher than six months, but I linked two OECD country guidelines that require mitigating circumstances for such a sentence, so there you go.

As for the time served, 50% is average for violent crime, I don't have recent data for rape specifically, but the 6-month sentence is the basic one, and he could serve only 3 months according to the OP source linked. Such a release is quite normal and currently not set, so I don't think it's relevant, but for completeness' sake as I was the one who mentioned it.
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Last edited by Askias on Sun Jun 05, 2016 4:06 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby sunglasses » Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:56 pm

aviel, I agree that the states have a high prison population but that has nothing to do with the sentencing in this case. Or, actually, anything about this case. If anything, this is a bit more similar to the DuPont heir who was convicted of raping a child but did not go to prison as the judge stated that the convicted person "would not fair well in prison."

Nobody fucking fairs well in prison! GAH.

Judges seem to consistently give lesser sentences when rape is involved and it sends a rather negative message to all survivors. Sometimes, as in the case I linked, these jokes are corrected. But that's not always the case.

Sexually assault survivors already feel like the courts, police, etc are against them/failing them.

So when you're abjectly focusing on one aspect, namely "US has a high prison pop" and ignoring all the social ramifications, it comes across as a bit callous.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sun Jun 05, 2016 7:09 pm

The rapist's dad is saying he shouldn't go to prison because the rape lasted only, like, 20 minutes.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Piter Lauchy » Sun Jun 05, 2016 7:26 pm

Newsflash, Mr Turner: Drinking is not the problem. Rape is. Believe it or not, but there are people who get very drunk regularly and have never sexually assaulted anyone.

If your son didn't want to deal with the aftermath of raping someone, he shouldn't have raped someone.

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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby DashaBlade » Sun Jun 05, 2016 11:54 pm

Dear Mr. Turner,

I'm sorry that the state has to step in and attempt to teach your son a lesson that you, as his father, failed to teach him. Your letter shows where he gets his lack of remorse and his failure to recognize his responsibilities. It's nice that you're concerned about his well being now, but it's a shame you didn't think of that when you were teaching him about the birds and the bees, because you could have warned him that sticking his dirty fingers into a passed out girl is not the way to go about things. The fact that you don't even acknowledge that what he did is a heinous crime tells me all I need to know about his upbringing, because if he'd been taught right, no amount of alcohol could have induced him to do something he was fundamentally against in the first place. The fact is, when your son's inhibitions are lowered by alcohol, he becomes a rapist. Don't blame the alcohol for this, because Johnnie Walker didn't rape that woman, and Jose Cuervo didn't plant the idea in your son's head. The idea was already there.

In short, sir, you are an apologist asshole, and it is no wonder that your son is, as well.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Jun 06, 2016 9:16 am

"He has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th 2015." (emphasis mine)

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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jun 06, 2016 9:22 am

Crimson847 wrote:"He has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th 2015." (emphasis mine)

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Translated from the original Weasel:
He didn't drag a girl off a the street with a knife to her throat like some common thug. Even if we assume my son did penetrate that lying, drunken slut's vagina a bit (and I'm still not admitting that), it wasn't really a rape rape, you know?
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Jun 06, 2016 10:20 am

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016 ... -statement

Dan Turner said imprisonment was not the “appropriate punishment” for his son, who was “totally committed to educating other college age students about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity”.

“By having people like Brock educate others on college campuses is how society can begin to break the cycle of binge drinking and its unfortunate results.”

This echoed Turner’s own statement, in which he said he was in the process of establishing a program for high school and college students so that he could “speak out against the college campus drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that”.


In justifying the six-month sentence, Judge Persky said positive character references written on Turner’s behalf, such as that given by his father, had factored into his decision. His age, his lack of a criminal history, and the role that alcohol played in the assault were also mitigating factors.


Palo Alto Online reported that Turner plans to appeal his conviction and will be represented by Dennis Riordan, a well-known San Francisco appellate attorney.


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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Tuli » Mon Jun 06, 2016 11:21 am

I hope the appeals court slaps him with a proper sentence this time. It's obvious this family knows no remorse or shame, holy balls.
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Jun 06, 2016 7:08 pm

Tuli wrote:I hope the appeals court slaps him with a proper sentence this time. It's obvious this family knows no remorse or shame, holy balls.


Don't you understand? He does feel remorseful about his drinking. He's very sorry that he drank so much, and he's pledged to teach college students not to drink. What more could anyone possibly want?


*lets the unspoken answer hang in the air*
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Mon Jun 06, 2016 7:59 pm

Why does society encourage a culture of sociopathy among the rich, again?
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Re: Convicted rapist sentenced to 6 months in prison

Postby DamianaRaven » Mon Jun 06, 2016 9:02 pm

Ericthebearjew wrote:Why does society encourage a culture of sociopathy among the rich, again?


Because wealth is something that most people seemingly want. Therefore, they (mistakenly) assume that anyone who has wealth must be more capable and worthy of privilege than those who spend their lives in poverty.
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