Rutgers Webcam-Spying Defendant Is Sentenced

[pdogg]

The sentence was handed down in this divisive case today. Here's the take of NY Times. Tomorrow I'll post what the Daily Targum has to say about it.

For inquiring minds the incident happened in Davidson C Dorm.

May 21, 2012

Rutgers Webcam-Spying Defendant Is Sentenced to 30-Day Jail Term

By KATE ZERNIKE

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A judge here sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail on Monday for using a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with a man, a punishment that angered prosecutors and did little to quiet the debate over using laws against hate crimes to fight antigay bias.

His roommate, Tyler Clementi, killed himself in September 2010, two days after discovering that Mr. Ravi had spied on him in their room at Rutgers University, galvanizing national concern about suicide among gay teenagers.

Mr. Ravi had faced up to 10 years in prison after a jury convicted him of all 15 counts against him, which included bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with a witness and evidence.

Prosecutors vowed to appeal, and the sentence surprised even many who had called for leniency, as it came after an extended scolding by Judge Glenn Berman in Superior Court in Middlesex County.

“I heard this jury say guilty 288 times — 24 questions, 12 jurors, that’s the multiplication,” the judge told Mr. Ravi, recalling the questionnaire jurors filled out in arriving at the verdict. “And I haven’t heard you apologize once.”

“I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi,” the judge told a courtroom packed on one side with supporters of Mr. Ravi and on the other with those of the Clementi family. “I do believe he acted out of colossal insensitivity.”

Prosecutors and Mr. Clementi’s family, who had addressed reporters with relief bordering on buoyancy following the verdict two months ago, canceled a news conference planned for after the sentencing. Mr. Ravi’s family collapsed into an embrace with his lawyers. Just moments earlier, his mother, Sabitha Ravi, had sobbed while imploring the judge to spare her son prison time.

“The media misconstrued the facts to the public and misconceptions were formed,” she said, telling how she watched helplessly as her son sank into despair after he was charged and dropped out of Rutgers, barely eating or leaving the house. “All I could do was hug him and cry.”

At her tears, Mr. Ravi himself broke down crying, the first time since the beginning of the trial that he had publicly shown more than a glimpse of emotion.

Mr. Ravi, 20, was not charged with causing Mr. Clementi’s death, but the suicide hung heavily over the trial, and over the sentencing on Monday. Mr. Clementi’s mother, father and brother spoke before the judge delivered his decision, breaking down occasionally as they recalled his accomplishment and his promise, and the pain of losing him and of reliving the agony of his final days as they endured three weeks of courtroom testimony.

“I cannot imagine the level of rejection, isolation and disdain he must have felt from his peers,” Tyler’s brother James Clementi said. “Dharun never bothered to care about the harm he was doing to my brother’s heart and mind. My family has never heard an apology, an acknowledgment of any wrongdoing.”

His mother, Jane Clementi, also criticized students who knew about the spying from Mr. Ravi’s Twitter feeds. “How could they all go along with such meanness?” she said. “Why didn’t any one of them speak up and try to stop it?”

Judge Berman said he wanted to impose a sentence that was “constructive” and would provide a measure of closure — “though I don’t know how the Clementis will ever get closure,” he said. He said he imposed the jail time for witness and evidence tampering and for lying to the police. But for the bias intimidation convictions, he gave Mr. Ravi three years’ probation.

The judge did not explicitly say why he deviated so far from the maximum sentence. But he said he believed the State Legislature had intended prison time to be attached to crimes of violence, and there had been none.

Mr. Ravi’s lead lawyer, Steven Altman, had earlier read from a presentencing memo by a corrections officer who had interviewed Mr. Ravi and recommended against incarceration.

Mr. Ravi, who came to this country from India as a child, remains a felon and could face deportation. But the judge said he would recommend against that.

Gillian M. Christensen, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency was “in the process of reviewing documents relating to the conviction and sentencing” of Mr. Ravi, but would not comment further.

Some immigration lawyers pointed on Monday to a clause declaring that a legal resident, or green card holder, like Mr. Ravi can be deported if convicted of two or more crimes involving “moral turpitude,” as long as neither crime arose out of a single scheme.

Thomas E. Moseley, an immigration lawyer based in Newark, said that if the immigration authorities “wanted to be really aggressive,” they might argue that the tampering crime was separate from the bias crime.

Judge Berman also sentenced Mr. Ravi to 300 hours of community service, counseling about cyberbullying and what he called “alternate lifestyles,” and approximately $11,000 in fees. Most of the money is to be used to help victims of bias crimes.

Mr. Clementi, an 18-year-old who had recently come out to his parents, and Mr. Ravi were three weeks into their freshman year at Rutgers when Mr. Clementi asked if he could have the room for the evening so he could be alone with a man, whom he had met on a Web site for gay men.

In court, prosecutors presented a long trail of electronic evidence to show how Mr. Ravi had set up a webcam to spy on the men, then gone into a friend’s room and watched. He caught only a glimpse of Mr. Clementi and his visitor in an embrace, then sent out Twitter messages announcing that he had seen his roommate “making out with a dude.” He set up the camera again two days later and urged others to watch. But by then, Mr. Clementi had seen the Twitter posts and turned off the webcam.

Mr. Clementi, an accomplished violinist from Ridgewood, N.J., checked Mr. Ravi’s Twitter feed 38 times and filed a request for a room change — and then jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. In court on Monday, his mother said she feared Mr. Ravi’s Twitter posts were the last thing her son saw before he jumped.

Many gay rights advocates had hailed the jury’s verdict as a bold strike against bias, a message that bullying of gay men and lesbians should not be dismissed as a mere prank.

But other prominent gay commentators argued that while what Mr. Ravi did was repugnant, it was not the kind of sustained or aggressive behavior that constitutes bullying.

The sentence similarly divided them.

Steven Goldstein, the chairman of Garden State Equality, a New Jersey gay rights group that pushed for the state to pass its strict antibullying statutes after Mr. Clementi’s death, said the sentence was lighter than what many shoplifters received.

“We have opposed throwing the book at Dharun Ravi,” Mr. Goldstein said in a statement. “But we have similarly rejected the other extreme, that Ravi should have gotten no jail time at all, and today’s sentencing is closer to that extreme than the other.”

William Dobbs, who had attended rallies supporting Mr. Ravi, said the judge was reflecting the discomfort many gay rights campaigners expressed at the use of hate crimes to prosecute Mr. Ravi.

“The judge had to control a backlash to an out-of-control prosecution,” he said. “The number of charges, the severity and the potential penalties, even the amount of resources devoted to this trial, was out of all proportion to the incident.”

Bruce J. Kaplan, the Middlesex County prosecutor, issued a statement after the sentencing, saying that while his office had not requested the maximum prison term, “it was expected that his conviction on multiple offenses of invading the privacy of two victims on two separate occasions, four counts of bias intimidation against Tyler Clementi, and the cover-up of those crimes would warrant more than a 30-day jail term.”

Still, even some jurors continued to struggle over the appropriate sentence. One, Susan Matiejunas, said she had watched the proceedings on television all morning and was surprised.

“Thirty days is a slap on the wrist,” she said. “Six months to a year would have been more suitable, since we convicted him on so many counts.”

Ms. Matiejunas telephoned later to say she had reconsidered.

“The kid has spent two years in purgatory just waiting for all of this to end,” she said. “I think probably 30 days really is quite enough on top of all that.”

Nate Schweber contributed reporting from New Brunswick, and Hannah Miet and Kirk Semple from New York.

[JaiDee]

Bad outcome IMO......I remember when this case happened and I think the kid should have gotten at least a year of hard time to think about his actions.

One month is a joke sentence which I highly doubt will cure his homophobia.

[farangbah]

the Daily Targum

Nice...

[pdogg]

From the Daily Targum....

So the question that springs to mind is if the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center is the type of joint where Ravi will get raped and sodomized?

A friend spent a couple weeks in the Middlesex Workhouse which in 1984 was merged into Adult Correction Center. My buddy kinda liked it there smoking cigarettes with the boys and swaping stories bout b&e's etc.

While I doubt that Adult Correction Center is a Club Fed, I also don't think it's a tough State prison either, but i am really not sure.

Judge sentences Ravi to 30 days in jail

By Amy Rowe / News Editor | Posted: Monday, May 21, 2012 1:28 pm

Dharun Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in county jail, closing one of the most publicized cases to reach the Middlesex County Courthouse in recent years.

Ravi, the 20-year-old former University student found guilty on charges of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence in March, must also complete 300 hours of community service and pay $10,000 in fines to the state over his three-year probationary period, Judge Glenn Berman said.

The sentence was surprising to some at the courthouse, who thought a lengthier sentence for the second-degree crimes, which carry up to 10 years in prison, would be imposed on the defendant.

“The state submits that incarceration of this defendant is the proper, appropriate punishment and sentence,” said Julia McClure, the prosecuting attorney, before Berman announced the sentence. “Justice can only be realized by respecting and enforcing the law and punishing this defendant.”

Ravi spied on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, during an engaged sexual encounter with another man, M.B., via webcam in their Davidson Hall C residence in September 2010.

Tyler Clementi committed suicide in the days following Ravi’s second spying attempt, but Ravi is not charged in conjunction with his death.

Although the second-degree bias intimidation charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, Berman opted for a lesser sentence for Ravi that also includes a mandatory counseling program on cyberbullying and alternative lifestyles.

M.B.’s lawyer Richard Pompelio read his client’s victim impact report during the proceedings, in which M.B. said he thought Ravi should be punished and acknowledge that what he did was wrong, but should not be deported to India, where the defendant was born.

Berman said he would not recommend deportation when signing his judgment.

Before Berman told Ravi his sentence, he heard from Ravi’s mother, who said her son has not left the house much over the last 20 months.

“He literally eats one meal a day to suppress his hunger. He has lost more than 25 pounds going through this ordeal. … Dharun’s only comfort is his younger brother and our dog, Lance,” Sabitha Ravi said. “Dharun’s dreams are shattered, and he has been living in hell for the past 20 months.”

While traditionally the defense provides its statement first, Dharun Ravi’s attorney Steven Altman asked the judge if the prosecution could provide victim impact statements first, and with McClure’s consent, Berman approved his inquiry.

The Clementi family spoke on behalf of Tyler Clementi in court, maintaining that what Dharun Ravi did was reprehensible and criminal.

“Mr. Ravi did these criminal acts … because [he thought] my son was different from him, below him, and he was gay,” said Joseph Clementi, Tyler’s father. “He did it without a thought or consideration of how it could affect Tyler.”

In all of their speeches, the Clementis mentioned the defendant never apologized for his actions.

“I watched as Dharun slept through court as though it were something not worth staying awake for,” said Tyler’s older brother, James Clementi. “Dharun has never shown any remorse. My family has never heard an apology or acknowledgment of any wrongdoing.”

At the beginning of the day’s proceedings, the defense asked for a new trial, but Berman denied its request.

The judge also announced that the former University student Molly Wei, who was involved in the spying, would have a shortened pre-trial intervention program.

Wei, who watched Tyler Clementi and M.B. from her room in Davidson C with Dharun Ravi, testified against the defendant as part of entering PTI.

She had already completed 250 of the mandatory 300 community service hours before appearing in court two months ago, Berman said.

In reasoning his sentence, Berman said Dharun Ravi did not contemplate harming Tyler Clementi before spying on him.

“I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi, but I do believe he acted with colossal insensitivity,” Berman said.

He granted Dharun Ravi a stay of 10 days, after which he must report to the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center on May 31 at 9 a.m. to serve his sentence.

[pdogg]

Here's today's cartoon from the Targum for those who miss the banks of the old Raritan too much: