2 athletes convicted of raping unconscious women given wildly different sentences

BipolarFuk

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KING: Brock Turner and Cory Batey, two college athletes who raped unconscious women, show how race and privilege affect sentences

By Shaun King

When Cory Batey was a 19-year-old standout football player at Vanderbilt, he raped an unconscious woman. The ample evidence, including security cameras showing the unconscious woman being carried into a dorm room and cellphone photos and videos of the sexual assault, was clear — Cory Batey sexually assaulted the woman. In April, a jury found Batey guilty of three felony counts including aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery.

He was immediately remanded into custody and must serve a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 to 25 years in prison.

What Batey did was reprehensible. The judge and jury treated his crime as such.

That's what makes the case of Brock Turner, a 19-year-old standout swimmer at Stanford who raped an unconscious woman, all the more infuriating. As was the case with Batey, ample evidence existed that Turner was guilty. Eyewitnesses actually caught him in the act as he sexually assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. A jury agreed and Turner was found guilty of multiple felony rape charges. Turner, though, was given a six-month jail sentence and told he could be released on good behavior in as little as three months. He won't even go to an actual prison, but will remain in the local jail during that time.

One man will spend the entire prime of his life in prison for his crime — the other will be out of jail before the summer heat disappears.

One man is black and the other is white. I won't even ask you to guess which is which. This is America.

The judge in the Turner case, Aaron Persky, who was also a standout athlete in a stuffy, predominantly white sport at Stanford, seemed to see himself in the young man and felt that a long prison sentence for Turner would be an overreach of justice and stated publicly that "a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him." Isn't that the point of a prison sentence?

No such sympathy was given to Batey, who claimed that he, like the victim, was also drunk and could not remember a single moment of the incident.

Such is often the case of crime in America. Black men consistently pay the harshest possible price for crimes they commit. Just off the top, black men are given prison sentences 20% longer than white men for the exact same crimes. Cory Batey's minimum possible prison sentence, though, is actually 3,000% longer than what Brock Turner was given for a comparable crime.

It doesn't stop there.

African-Americans and Latinos are three times as likely to have their cars searched by police than whites and are twice as likely to be arrested for drugs over whites — even though studies show whites use and sell drugs at the same or even higher rates than African-Americans.

The argument here is not that Cory Batey should've been given a break and let off in three months like Brock Turner. Instead, the argument is that the racial disparity in sentencing for similar crimes is completely out of hand. America's jails and prisons are overflowing with young black and Latino teenagers who are paying the harshest price possible for their crimes.

Teenager Kalief Browder spent over three years in Rikers Island because he was suspected of having stolen a book bag. He was never even charged with a crime and committed suicide months after his release.

Jasmine Richards, a young activist in Pasadena, California, was convicted of "felony lynching" after she stood up for a young stranger she thought was being brutalized by the police and could spend years in prison over it. It is among the most ridiculous, trumped up convictions I've seen in my entire life.

America doesn't have a hard time sending people to prison for years on end. Our country does that well. It's just that the same rules don't seem to apply if you are white and privileged.
 

townsend

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Funny thing is a ton of black athletes get their crimes swept under the rug. But that has more to do with college administrators, I think.
 

Cotton

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Funny thing is a ton of black athletes get their crimes swept under the rug. But that has more to do with college administrators, I think.
Nah, it's all about race and stuff. Not to mention all the athletes at Baylor that got forgiven. Or at least not reported.
 

NoDak

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Nah, it's all about race and stuff. Not to mention all the athletes at Baylor that got forgiven. Or at least not reported.
The reverend jiggton will be along shortly to smite you, whitey. Pray for forgiveness of your heathen, racist ways.
 

Genghis Khan

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It's hard to compare cases. You can focus on one aspect, like race, and be outraged by disparate outcomes.

But, there are other aspects of individual cases that can and do affect the outcome. For instance, what is the jurisdiction? California courts tend to be quirky, for lack of a better term. Jurors in different jurisdictions tend to be harsher than others.

What are the charges? The crimes may look the same but for various reasons (significantly including what they can prove) the charges could be vastly different with vastly different sentencing guidelines. And we are talking about state laws for the most part, so different charges and guidelines could come inherently with differences in state statutes.

What evidence exists? What kind of competencies are the attorneys presenting?

And on and on.

Also, and I am not an expert in criminal law, but if I recall correctly while priors cannot be used for propensity during trials they could be taken into consideration for sentencing.

It's easy to go for the low hanging fruit but it's much more complex than that.
 

Smitty

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Geng, I forget, are you in PA?

Because there, yes, prior record is mandatory in consideration with sentencing, it's called Prior Record Score. The judge then has a range that he must sentence to depending on a matrix of the PRS and gravity of the instant charge.
 

Smitty

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I call bullshit on the story story about the kid who spent 3 years at Rikers Island without being charged. The US Constitution doesn't allow that, period. There's more to that story, i.e., like he never even called a basic public defender.

Also I'm less outraged at the discrepancy than I am that drunken date rape can land you in jail 15 to 25 years, that's absurd.
 

Angrymesscan

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Idk, if someone raped my daughter, I'd have no problem with that asshole doing 15-25.
 

BipolarFuk

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I call bullshit on the story story about the kid who spent 3 years at Rikers Island without being charged. The US Constitution doesn't allow that, period. There's more to that story, i.e., like he never even called a basic public defender.

Also I'm less outraged at the discrepancy than I am that drunken date rape can land you in jail 15 to 25 years, that's absurd.
I agree. Raping an unconscious woman should get you many more years in prison.
 

townsend

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I call bullshit on the story story about the kid who spent 3 years at Rikers Island without being charged. The US Constitution doesn't allow that, period. There's more to that story, i.e., like he never even called a basic public defender.

Also I'm less outraged at the discrepancy than I am that drunken date rape can land you in jail 15 to 25 years, that's absurd.
The way I understand it, with the Rikers incident, the way it worked is that the hearings could get delayed for as long as it takes to plea for time served. The public defenders, like most public defenders just wanted him to take the plea bargain and go home, he wouldn't, and so he was just retained there while his hearing kept getting held off.
 

Genghis Khan

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Geng, I forget, are you in PA?

Because there, yes, prior record is mandatory in consideration with sentencing, it's called Prior Record Score. The judge then has a range that he must sentence to depending on a matrix of the PRS and gravity of the instant charge.

I am in PA, yes. I've never done criminal law though. That's interesting, I thought they considered prior records but I didn't realize it's mandatory.
 

Rev

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I am in PA, yes. I've never done criminal law though. That's interesting, I thought they considered prior records but I didn't realize it's mandatory.
Wait. You are a Lawyer, too?

:picard
 

Cowboysrock55

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Idk, if someone raped my daughter, I'd have no problem with that asshole doing 15-25.
It's always different when you are looking at your own child. But considering most don't get that long of a sentence for forcible rape I have a real hard time thinking 15-25 is appropriate in that type of situation.

Drunken rape is just so odd to me. On one hand obviously having sex with a person who is unconscious is horribly wrong but what if the person is just really, really drunk? How do you draw that line? Or what if you start having sex with someone and then one of the people passes out during sex? Does it become rape then? And then there is obviously the gender bias involved. I doubt many men who get to drunk and have sex with a woman are claiming rape. But if it goes one direction, doesn't it also go the other?
 

Angrymesscan

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It's always different when you are looking at your own child. But considering most don't get that long of a sentence for forcible rape I have a real hard time thinking 15-25 is appropriate in that type of situation.
It is different when looking at your own child, but should that not be the basis?
As per the length I'm thinking it's forcible rape that should be reviewed, not the other way around. I'm guessing the augmentation came more because of the victims being "roofied", which meant premeditation and planning, than victims getting too drunk to give consent, but either way doing something to an unconscious person should never be accepted or belittled.


Drunken rape is just so odd to me. On one hand obviously having sex with a person who is unconscious is horribly wrong but what if the person is just really, really drunk? How do you draw that line? Or what if you start having sex with someone and then one of the people passes out during sex? Does it become rape then? And then there is obviously the gender bias involved. I doubt many men who get to drunk and have sex with a woman are claiming rape. But if it goes one direction, doesn't it also go the other?
Any doubt should be cleared by this video.


As per the gender bias, it does go both ways, just men are a little more difficult to rape, in the sense that most passed out guys couldn't get an erection, and even more hesitant to step forward for fear of ridicule, stigma, shaming, etc.
 
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townsend

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It's always different when you are looking at your own child. But considering most don't get that long of a sentence for forcible rape I have a real hard time thinking 15-25 is appropriate in that type of situation.

Drunken rape is just so odd to me. On one hand obviously having sex with a person who is unconscious is horribly wrong but what if the person is just really, really drunk? How do you draw that line? Or what if you start having sex with someone and then one of the people passes out during sex? Does it become rape then? And then there is obviously the gender bias involved. I doubt many men who get to drunk and have sex with a woman are claiming rape. But if it goes one direction, doesn't it also go the other?
I think there's some fair criticism here, I was listening to an interview of a woman who would get black out drunk and have sex with people, they didn't necessarily know she wasn't able to consent, so it's hard to hold them to the standard of rapists, if it wasn't intentional, also they were drunk so their decision making was also compromised.

I think there's some haziness in the middle, but we can be sure that if the person is physically helpless, at the point where they would need a person's help to stand or walk, then that's no longer consent. If you have sex with someone, even when they're awake, that doesn't have the working mental faculties of an adult (and it should be obvious) that's definitely rape.
 

Cowboysrock55

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As per the gender bias, it does go both ways, just men are a little more difficult to rape, in the sense that most passed out guys couldn't get an erection, and even more hesitant to step forward for fear of ridicule, stigma, shaming, etc.
Not saying I have passed out during sex or anything... But it's possible :unsure
 

Angrymesscan

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Not saying I have passed out during sex or anything... But it's possible :unsure
I never said it's impossible, just more difficult, you could also be given or taken viagra or something, but you would be well within your rights to claim rape if it were to happen and you were so inclined...:unsure
 

Cowboysrock55

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I never said it's impossible, just more difficult, you could also be given or taken viagra or something, but you would be well within your rights to claim rape if it were to happen and you were so inclined...:unsure
I'm sure a man or two has. But ultimately a guy is more likely to brag about that happening then to feel ashamed and report it as a crime. With women it's the opposite because sleeping around for them is viewed so negatively. If they wake up the next day after getting drunk and having sex they are way more likely to feel a sense of shame. I just think there is an awful lot of gray area when you have two people drunk having sex. But then again there is no gray area when a person is passed out. That's pretty clear. Plus what the hell kind of fun would that sex be? It sounds absolutely horrible.
 
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