Outrage over last week’s slap-on-the-wrist punishment handed down to a former University of Colorado student is easily understandable and justified.
Austin James Wilkerson was convicted earlier this year of sexual assault on a helpless victim. His crime is all the more heinous given that his victim was drunk and Wilkerson assured her friends he would care for her. His crimes could have netted four to 12 years in prison. Instead, Boulder District Judge Patrick Butler gave the young man a mere two years in jail — with the privilege of leaving lock-up during the day to work or attend school — and 20 years’ probation. Wilkerson also must register as a sexual offender.
Outrage over the light sentence went viral and drew comparisons to Brock Turner, a former Stanford student athlete who drew a jail sentence in a rape conviction and thereby dodged prison.
Those of us who wish to protect women’s rights and freedoms see sentences like those given to Turner and Wilkerson as wildly irresponsible.
However, in Wilkerson’s case, Judge Butler also had to deal with Colorado’s Lifetime Supervision Act, and that wrinkle forces us to view the judge’s decision somewhat differently. The well-intentioned law passed in 1998 proved tricky for Butler, as Daily Camera reporter Mitchell Byars reported in a fascinating review of the case.
We, too, struggle with the indeterminate-sentence implications of the act. The intention is to rehabilitate rapists and pedophiles through treatment, so that once a sentence expires, the perpetrator returns to the community better able to deal with his compulsions. Should the convict not be deemed properly rehabilitated, however, the state can hold him until experts say his transformation has been complete.
The act seeks to ensure that the most violent and sick predators don’t simply bide their time, hoping to prey again. Yet there are problems with the law’s implementation.
The most obvious in Wilkerson’s case is that the law was written for hardened offenders. Whether the college student’s crime of impulse or passion meets that standard is a legitimate question. Certainly his crime is of a different sort than that of a pedophile who grooms his victims and their families for years, waiting for opportunity, or rapists who stalk unknown victims.
Treatment programs often aren’t well-funded. And as Byars reported, programs and evaluators have seen decreased resources.
And so a judge facing an offender like Wilkerson fears that should he sentence him to prison, the young man could remain there far longer than his sentence — even for life.
Solutions to this quandary won’t be easy, but should be pursued. More money for treatment would help. Lawmakers could revisit the law and revise it to try to account for difficult cases like the one Butler faced.
But standing by the status quo would clearly be the wrong move. Rape victims deserve to trust that the system will protect them and see that their attackers receive true punishment. Without that trust, light punishments like Wilkerson’s could prevent future victims from coming forward — and justice would not be served.
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