AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe, Professor Michele Landis Dauber, the
scene in the courtroom at the sentencing? You were there early, right, even before this case, the sentencing of Brock Turner, took place? Describe what happened.
MICHELE LANDIS DAUBER: Oh, yeah. So this is really interesting, relevant to the recall. Right before the perpetrator in the Brock Turnerright before Brock Turner was sentenced, a domestic violence case came up, and the defendant was there to plead guilty in a plea deal. And the victim, which is very rare, stepped up and made a victim impact statement, even though it was a plea deal, and it was a lengthy victim impact statement. And she was a Chinese immigrant who spoke very eloquently, although her English was not terrific, andbut she had pages and pages, and her statement was essentially, "I am not getting justice, because Im a woman of color and I dont speak English and Im Chinese. But here, I want to show the audience," she said, "I want to show the courtroom these photos." And she held up photos that were grizzly. She had been beaten so badly that she was completely unrecognizable. She was covered in blood. She repeatedly referred to this as having been tortured, that her hair had been pulled out, that she was very, very, very severely injured, that she was hospitalized, that she had stitches. And, I mean, the photos were almost impossible to look at. They were like crime scene photos. And he got like a weekend or two in jail. And she was decrying this and saying, "This is too light. Where is justice? Im not getting justice."
And when he was sentenced even to that weekend in jail, there was athe judge was very concerned to make sure that he was going to get to go to work on Monday. And so, there was a sort of like, you know, thing that happened in the courtroom while we all had to sit there while they tried to communicate with the county jail to make sure that he wouldnt be super-inconvenienced by having to go to jail for having basically almost beaten this woman to death. And when that happened, I thought, "Oh, man, you know, were in trouble," because this was a case of extremely serious beating, and the judge did not seem too worried about it when he sentenced him to his weekend. And I immediately thought, "Oh, man, were going to have a problem." And then we did.
AMY GOODMAN: So this judge, Persky, heard two, to say the least, powerful victim statements within a very brief period of time.
MICHELE LANDIS DAUBER: Yeah, it was sort of surreal, in a sense, you know, to see the Brock Turner victim statement juxtaposed with this immigrant victim impact statement, because I actually think the first one was probably just as compelling, but its that she, you know, maybe didnt have all the benefitsa facility with language and elite education and so forththat the victim in the Turner case had. So this is sort of going back to the, you know, "I am everywoman who has been victimized by violence against women." And she was really giving voice to many cases. And, you know, the judge interrupted the immigrant woman, whose name I dont knowIm sorrymultiple times and said, you know, "Could you hurry it along? Yes, yes, get to the point." You know, "Yes, Im familiar with your case." He treated her very dismissively, to the point that other people in the courtroom were sort of murmuring, like, you know, "Why cant she finish?" So, it wasit was a sign to me. And as I work on the recall, it is a sign to me that we need judges in place who really understand violence against women, where it comes from, how important it is to deter it, how we can get strong sentences for it, and who take it seriously and dont trivialize it. And I just think that Judge Persky is not that person, and he should be replaced with someone who will do a better job.
