Trial by e-mob
By now everybody has heard of Brock Turner, the swimmer-turned-rapist who received a six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting a fellow student at Stanford University. Turner, 20, took advantage of a drunk woman’s unconsciousness to assault her behind a dumpster, stopping only when two other students physically hauled him away from her and sat on him until police arrived. Prosecutors urged Judge Aaron Persky to sentence Turner to at least six years in prison, while probation officials called for a more lenient sentence. At the sentencing, Turner’s father read a letter in which he said that prison was “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.” In the end, the judge gave him six months in county lockup, of which he may serve as little as three months. He must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and participate in a sex offender rehabilitation program.
The light sentence has left many people outraged. It’s triggered acrimonious exchanges about white privilege, rape culture and other hot topics that should be discussed.
It’s also brought out the ugly side of the Information Age. Angry people everywhere have taken to the Internet to descend on Turner, his family and the judge. And we’re not just talking about disapproving tweets and sad-emoji Facebook posts. Petitions have been launched to recall Judge Persky, and jurors in another case refused to sit in his courtroom in retaliation. Moreover, the judge has been subjected to death threats and phone messages expressing a hope that his family will be raped. Turner’s parents’ house in Ohio has been besieged by protesters, at least one of them openly armed, according to a local TV news report. A group of self-identified witches even gathered online to (we’re not making this up) hex Turner with lifelong impotence, stomach pain and other maladies.
Perhaps the most egregious retaliation has been against Leslie Rasmussen, a former classmate of Turner’s who wrote a letter in defense of his character. For this “crime,” the band she plays drums for suddenly found its gigs canceled in the face of a threatened boycott against any venue that scheduled them. In essence, she was punished merely for having been Turner’s friend.
Gone are the lynch mobs with torches and pitchforks. Welcome to the age of the e-mob.
We’ve seen the e-mob before. A few years ago when George Zimmerman was acquitted of homicide on self-defense grounds, personal information about Zimmerman’s family members was posted online with the passive-aggressive understanding that it would be used to harass them. And the e-mob didn’t disappoint. At one point Zimmerman’s brother told reporters he and his family were receiving an average of 400 death threats a minute on social media, according to news reports at the time. Zimmerman’s parents, too, had to go into hiding. The court may have acquitted him, but the e-mob overturned the acquittal and sentenced him and his to live in perpetual fear.
Unlike ordinary mobs, the e-mob is not limited in either location or number. It can form anytime and strike anywhere, and because of the anonymity the internet affords, is almost never held accountable. It crosses so many jurisdictions that even clear-cut cases of harassment or threats are hard for law enforcement to pursue.
We don’t dispute that Turner probably deserved a harsher sentence for his crimes. Perhaps the judge was wrong. But we have a system in place that gives the judge the authority to pass sentence. It does not entitle anybody with a keyboard and a data connection to add to his sentence. Nor does our judicial system provide for punishment to be meted out to an accused’s friends and family. The e-mob must not be allowed to make an end run around the law.
Protests and discussion are good things. But if the e-mob isn’t curtailed, we may find our judicial system replaced by a faceless, unaccountable judiciary with perverse notions of justice.
— Editorial board