California’s governor signed a sex crimes bill authored after Brock Turner’s assault case.
The law's passage is the latest development in the controversy surrounding the Oakwood High School graduate's 2015 sexual assault of a woman at Stanford University and his subsequent sentencing, which many decried as lenient.
Turner was released from jail early this month after serving three months of a six month sentence tied to the unconscious, intoxicated woman's sexual assault.
Last month, the California State Assembly unanimously passed a bill proponents say will ensure convicted sexual assailants serve prison time, instead of a jail sentence like Turner.
The bill was signed Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown according to the Associated Press.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told the Dayton Daily News earlier this month that no such law exists here, but he would be supportive of efforts to implement one.
“We don’t have really any particular law that says, like the California law, that in every case someone who commits a sexual assault should serve time,” DeWine said. “But I certainly would be in favor of that. It would seem to me to certainly make sense.”
The bill received broad support in California, with the exception of some, including the ACLU of California, which argued the bill would disproportionately impact minorities. Others were not convinced the law will do enough, because judges could still urge prosecutors to pursue a lesser charge.
Brown also signed a bill permitting sexual assault victims to say in court that they were raped, even if the attack doesn’t meet the technical legal definition.
The Associated Press contributed reporting from Sacramento, Calif.