*Earlier this week, in an interview with CNN‘s Brooke Baldwin, former NFL player Brian Banks — who was wrongly accused of rape in 2002 and served 5 years in prison — gave his thoughts on Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner, who was also found guilty of rape, but received what many are saying is a slap on the wrist.
Turner, who is white, was sentenced to only six months of jail time for raping an “unconscious, inebriated” female student in a 2015 incident.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to the short prison term because he did not want to harshly punish the accused swimmer. Persky feared that prison time would have a “severe impact” on the athlete.
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Banks told Baldwin that he was disgusted by the slap on the wrist.
“The judge in this case totally mishandled the situation,” Banks says. “Something has to be done about this and my heart goes out to the victim.”
The wrongly accused ex-football player points out the racial and economic privilege at play in the case.
“The sad thing about this is that Brock was sentenced based on his lifestyle. Because of that, the conclusion was that prison would have a negative impact on him. But what about the children that have no choice about where they are born and who they are born to … When that kid stands in front of that judge, they see all the negative.”
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