A former college student and athlete who was convicted of rape walked out of a California jail Friday morning after serving three months of a controversially lenient six-month sentence.
Brock Turner left the Santa Clara County Courthouse and got into a white SUV. He plans to return to his parents' home in Ohio, where he will remain on supervised probation for the next three years. He also will be on a list of registered sex offenders for the rest of his life.
Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky had sentenced the Stanford University swimming star to six months in jail and three years probation for his sexual assault on an unconscious woman behind a campus dumpster last year.
A jury found Turner guilty on three felony counts: assault with the intent to commit rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual penetration of an intoxicated person.
Turner served half of his controversially short term, because convicts with a clean disciplinary record in the county jail generally are released when half of their sentences are completed.
The sentence – along with a letter to Persky from the defendant's father, who said his son should not pay such a steep price for "20 minutes of action" – sparked outrage across the country.
