Brock Turner is officially a free man.
The former University of Stanford swimmer was convicted in March on three felony accounts of sexual assault.
A jury determined that Turner assaulted an unconscious woman outside a fraternity party in January of 2015.
Specifically, Turner was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman; sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object; and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.
He faced up to 10 years in prison, with prosecutors recommending six years behind bars.
Instead, to the shock and dismay of everyone outside of Turner"s family, a judge only sentenced Brock Turner to six months in jail.
Moreover, he only served half that time, leaving prison this morning around 6 a.m. after a three-month sentence.
You can see him walking out of the jail in the following video, ignoring the press and stepping into an SUV.
Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told reporters soon after Turner"s release that "he should be in prison right now, but he"s not in our custody."
Smith added that "we need to change the laws in California … if you rape someone who is unconscious and intoxicated, you go to prison."
She is not alone in this thinking.
The case made national news mostly due to the ridiculously short sentence, but also because Turner"s father wrote the judge a letter than downplayed his son"s actions.
Drastically.
Mr. Turner claimed Turner should not go to jail for what amounted to just "20 minutes of action."
The judge somehow agreed, stating that a lengthy sentence would have a "severe impact" on Turner.
In response, the woman Turner raped released a statement of her own in court
There"s no video of her doing so and she has chosen to remain anonymous, but CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield read the entire statement on air soon after this sentencing travesty went public.
“You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today,” Banfield read to open the message.
It went on to walk folks through the victim’s difficult experience – and it"s very much worthy of your time to listen to below:
Turner will need to attend drug and alcohol counseling and receive random testing as part of his so-called punishment.
But he was found guilty of raping an unconscious woman and spent only three months in jail.
Think about that as you watch him walk out a free man below:
