Before his release from jail this September, Brock Turner, the former Stanford student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, will undergo random testing as well as mandatory drug and alcohol counseling after he was found lying about his high school drug and alcohol use.
The new counseling requirements followed the release of documents from Santa Clara County Superior Court and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which revealed that Turner acted aggressively toward another woman prior to the convicted assault and that he lied to officials about his behavior in high school.
According to the prosecution’s sentencing memo, Turner denied using illegal drugs and said he only began drinking alcohol after he started attending Stanford in September 2014. He made the claims during an interview with a probation officer and during a jailhouse interview on June 14.
“Coming from a small town in Ohio, I had never really experienced celebrating or partying that involved alcohol,” Turner wrote in a statement to Judge Aaron Persky ’84 A.M. ’85.
However, according to the prosecution memo, the police concluded from photos and text messages retrieved from investigators that Turner was “engaging in excessive drinking and using drugs,” including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis, when he was in high school. Once Turner was notified that his text messages had been publicized, he admitted to using LSD, smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol in high school.
Turner also had a previous arrest for underage alcohol possession in November 2014.
In a report by the Associated Press, Turner’s probation manager Jana Taylor — who recommended the counseling for Turner — wrote in an email that the department does not want to be blamed for discovering that Turner had positive drug or alcohol tests and not modifying his probation accordingly.
Taylor wrote to the Associated Press that Judge Persky — who drew sharp scrutiny for giving Turner what many saw as a “light sentence” of six months in jail — will not oversee the changes in Turner’s probation terms.
The addition of counseling to Turner’s probation was enacted by the internal probation department, and is expected to be approved by the Santa Clara County Superior Court, Taylor wrote.
Contact Shagun Khare at shagunkhare.st ‘at’ gmail.com.