It took months for authorities to finally release the booking photo / mugshot for convicted Stanford rapist Brock Allen Turner. The 20-year-old was handed a six-month jail sentence for raping an unconscious, 23-year-old woman at a fraternity party. Plenty has been said about the length of the sentence, especially by Turner’s father, but the absence of his photo is what truly bothered many in the media.
https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/739846449647652864
Many stories were published with an image of Turner smiling for a school portrait or one of several images you could find on Google from his time at Stanford. There is an excuse for this, but it won’t give many too much confidence in the system:
Confusion over which agency’s responsibility it was to release the photo appeared to be behind its absence, the Cut reported. The Stanford Department of Public Safety initially arrested Turner. The case was then handled by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department. Spokespeople for both agencies told the Cut and others that only the other agency could release the photo.
Turner, 20, was sentenced to six months in jail for three felony counts by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky, far less than the six years in state prison that prosecutors had requested.
https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/739850776298717184
Even worse is how the photos were eventually released, according to NBC News:
The photos were finally made public a few hours after Diana Prichard, a filmmaker and freelance journalist in Michigan, published a formal request she made Monday afternoon to Stanford public-safety authorities rebutting point by point the arguments she said the university had made to decline her requests for Turner’s mugshots.
NBC is quick to note that the Police Department has still not officially posted about the case on their Facebook page, with their last post coming on on June 1.
(Via NBC News / the Washington Post)