This is why Stanford student's mugshot wasn't published during sexual assault case
Former Stanford student Brock Turner was convicted of three counts of sexual assault last week, but anyone who wasn't at the trial would know him only by the smiling images of him brought up with a simple Google search.
He's pictured smiling in a Stanford sweater, smiling with swimming medals around his neck, and smiling again wearing a suit and tie. Nowhere on the Internet was the above picture, the mugshot taken on the night of Turner's arrest, where he stares into the camera red-eyed and looking dazed.
For many members of the media covering the case -- recently or otherwise -- the lack of mugshot wasn't for lack of trying to get it.
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Journalist Diana Prichard and others engaged in a back-and-forth with the Stanford Department of Public Safety and the Santa Clara Sheriff's Department about why the photo wasn't more readily available.
The agencies seemed to be foisting responsibility on each other. The Stanford police, who had arrested Turner, reportedly said they'd taken a mugshot but that it was the county sheriff's department's job to decide whether or not to release it.
But sheriff's officials said the school had the authority and the photo, and the Stanford Department of Public Safety eventually provided the original mugshot to BoingBoing on June 6.
The sheriff's department also released a mugshot from Turner's sentencing, where his hair is cut short and he appears to be wearing a suit jacket.
So many aspects of this case have been put under a spotlight -- the sentence of just six months when Turner's crimes made him eligible for up to 14 years in prison, the statement read by the woman he assaulted, the many letters written by family and friends in Turner's defense.
The absence of a mugshot jointed those elements because of the face it put on the case.
People across the Internet pointed out that people convicted of a crime -- especially those who aren't white -- don't often have the luxury of a smiling photo to accompany stories about how they wound up in jail.
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Now that it's out, people want it to be at the top of Turner's Google search results.
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Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
