Blowup over Brock Turner song

Brock Turner and Judge Aaron Persky

BY ALLISON LEVITSKY
Daily Post Staff Writer
A song called “F*** Brock Turner,” calling for the former Stanford student and convicted sex offender to “get tossed in a Dumpster” and “choose to take a nosedive off the top of a cliff,” served yesterday as the latest bone to pick in the fight to unseat Aaron Persky, the Santa Clara County Superior Court judge who provoked national outrage when he sentenced Turner to six months in county jail last year.

Recall Persky leader and Stanford law professor Michele Dauber tweeted a link to a YouTube video playing the song at 11:46 a.m. on Saturday, posting: “#BrockTurner appealed his conviction and said it was ‘all lies’ and that he didn’t do anything wrong. He isn’t remorseful or accountable and learned nothing, which is exactly why the light sentence was wrong. Please enjoy this song. http://bit.ly/2iF5d3w.”

Dauber later deleted the tweet, but not before vocal recall opponent and retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell saw it.

“I found the content very disturbing because it advocates violence. It advocates that he should kill himself. The language is vulgar,” Cordell told the Post. “I find as disturbing that it has been promoted by someone who is a professor at a prestigious university who teaches undergraduate students.”

Turner, 22, appealed his conviction on Friday. He was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious 21-year-old woman behind a Dumpster outside a fraternity party in 2015, when he was a 19-year-old freshman.

Cordell, a former Palo Alto councilwoman and vice provost at Stanford, drew a connection between the song and the protests outside Turner’s family’s house in Ohio.

Protesters have been photographed carrying assault rifles and signs reading “Shoot your local rapist” and “Castrate rapists.”

“I am just stunned at the level of violence, vulgarity, the bullying, all this stuff, aimed at this young man,” Cordell said. “He erred. He has been convicted. And so we as a society, we believe in redemption, particularly in young people.”

Song called satire

Dauber said that when she tweeted the song, she didn’t interpret its meaning quite so seriously.

“Obviously, I do not endorse violence against Brock Turner or anyone else. I understood the song referenced in the tweet to be clearly satirical and not literal,” Dauber told the Post. “I have deleted the tweet to avoid any distraction from our focus on holding Judge Persky accountable for his pattern of bias in favor of college athletes who assault women.”

On Sept. 1, a recorded message from Cordell urging voters to oppose the recall went out to more than 100,000 phones in Santa Clara County. If Persky is removed from the bench, judges will be “looking over their shoulders, testing the winds before making their decisions,” she warned in the message.

Cordell also wrote in a blog post on Sept. 23 that while she would have given Turner a longer sentence, recalling Persky would be “terrible for racial justice,” citing the backlash she received after giving a one-year sentence to a 15-year-old Latina convicted of felony murder.

“There was an implication that my African-American identity had led to an unfair, indeed, an outrageous sentence. But there was no movement to seek my removal from the bench,” Cordell said. “Should this recall succeed in removing a judge for making an unpopular decision, it will be harder for low-income defendants, most of whom are of color, and harder for those who advocate for them, to receive judicial consideration of mitigating circumstances.”

Dauber is working to collect 58,634 signatures in order to qualify the recall measure for the June ballot.

The song lyrics can be read below. It was written, recorded and produced by Brandon and Christian Cordes of the Melted Crayons in Howell, N.J. last year.

Brock Turner/You’re the definition of scum
Get stomped on like old gum/I hope your face gets kicked in
Brock Turner, change your freaking last name
‘Cause Timmy Turner’s got it claimed/He doesn’t need the shame

I hope you never get a job/I hope you never get the girl
‘Cause we all know what you’ll do/It makes us all want to hurl
I hope you get tossed in a Dumpster/F*** Brock Turner

Brock Turner/You’re like a subway cockroach
A thing that no one will ever want to approach
Brock Turner/You might as well be poop
A thing that needs to be cleaned off the bottom of my boot

I hope you live your life with no fun or joy
With the constant reminder of the life you destroyed
I hope you fall through a gutter/F*** Brock Turner

We should never forget the two badass heroes of this story
Peter J. and Carl A., Swedish superheroes who deserve all the glory
Hey Brock Turner, I got a question for ya/For the day if you become a father
How ya gonna tell your daughter that you’re a monster?

Brock Turner, I hope you enjoyed your song
I hope it was something that you could sing along to/Not really
I hope you eat a d*** or choose to take a nosedive off the top of a cliff

I hope you never get a job/I hope you never get the girl
‘Cause we all know what you’ll do/It makes us all want to hurl
I hope you get tossed in a Dumpster/F*** Brock Turner