Molly Wei, took the stand today in the Dharun Ravi trial along with several other of Ravi’s classmates, in what generally was a bad day for the defendant: His claim that the webcam spying wasn’t deliberate was dismantled by Wei.
Wei (right), who struck a plea deal with prosecutors, said that Ravi was “freaking out” when she and Ravi looked at his webcam to spy on Clementi with another man. “[He was] just shocked and kind of surprised by what he saw. Kind of freaking out. He might’ve said, ‘Oh, he is gay,’ or something.”
She also implied that he tried to get away with things instead of ‘fessing up. “I think that he thought we were going to get in trouble, so he wanted to make it seem like it was more of an accident.”
But testimony today also held some promise for Ravi, suggesting the defendant was more distrustful of Clementi’s modest origins than the fact that he was gay.
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Pooja Kolluri, who also looked at the webcam, said Ravi thought Clementi’s date, identified only as M.B. in court papers, was going to steal his iPad.
“I saw two males kissing and it was the back of them—I couldn’t see their faces. I believe they had their shirts off. His roommate had asked for the room from 9 to 12 and [Ravi] didn’t know why, so he set up his webcam to make sure his things weren’t touched.”
Ravi’s friend Scott Xu testified, saying Ravi distrusted M.B. because he seemed older and “shady.”
“The only thing I heard about [M.B.] was that he looked ‘shady,’ ” said Xu, putting aggressive air-quotes around shady with his fingers. “It’s kind of a slang term for suspicious looking.”
Ravi is charged with invasion of privacy for filming two of Clementi’s gay trysts, as well as bias intimidation, witness tampering and hindering arrest.
Oh, ok.
It’s interesting when the other morons also behind the bullying can jump on one person to throw under the bus and get away with their part.
And I’m sure every other idiot in the world will be ok with that because hanging one for the entire thing is a lot easier than going after all people responsible.
This sounds like it was a group effort and group participation.
1equalityUSA
This might haunt you for the rest of your pathetic, little lives. Where is your remorse?
Matthew Dimick
Molly Wei took a plea bargain that was offered to her. She isn’t “getting away” with anything. I believe she ultimately withdrew from school and is now having to undergo counseling and complete 300 hours of community service.
Likewise, Ravi was offered a plea. He chose to not accept it and try his odds in court. Perhaps he saw the risk of deportation too great.
1equalityUSA
I can only hope that, to whatever age they reach in this life, every time their ears hear a violin playing, Mr. Clementi’s face rises up in their psyche.
Austin
So far I haven’t heard what Ravi did that was so criminal.
Obviously, its unfortunate that Clementi commit suicide,
but I have trouble that Clementi overreacting somehow makes Ravi criminal.
This all seems like fairly normal paranoia for a bunch of 18 year olds
that don’t know what to make of a new roommate.
If you’ve ever had a crazy roommate you can understand wanting more info,
and I’ve had my share of crazy roommates. I just didn’t live with them
in the age of easy webcams.
I’m completly open to changing my opinion if I see evidence he was malicious
Can somebody explain what he did that was “bullying”?
Josh
The bullying comes in when he broadcast the video through a live stream and began berating the guy on Twitter and Facebook. Just monitoring your roommate for crazy is one thing, attempt at public humiliation is another.
MKe
So the witnesses are all dissing Clementi? How did it get to this point? Is Clementi on trial? I thought the trial was about spying! No wonder people are so angry and emotional about this case. I was shocked by it before but it’s just getting more and more frustrating to see this sh*t.
MKe
@Josh: I agree but nobody monitors their roommate for crazy. If you’re afraid someone is going to steal your ipad you take it with you, aside from the fac that’s ridiculous since Tyler was going to be in the room. He knew there was going to be sexual activity that night.
Stephen
If you’re worried about someone stealing your iPad out of your room, don’t leave it alone in your room. It’s an iPad, you can literally carry it with you wherever you go.
Drew
Ravi Didn’t “out” Clementi
Ravi didn’t “broadcast Clementi having sex over the internet”
Ravi didn’t even record Clementi “having sex with a man”
I doubt all of you calling for his head are even acquainted with the facts of the case.
But why concern yourself with facts when a witch hunt is so much more satisfying?
Bleemin
Hate to agree w the trolls, but not sure if Ravi is guilty of anyhing outside of invasion of privacy and obstruction of justice. And being an uber-douche.
Mr. Robertson
@Bleemin: Does “troll” suddenly mean something new? Merely expressing a minority opinion doesn’t make one a “troll.” Some of us do honestly believe this kid doesn’t deserve to have his head lopped off.
Steve-O
I’m worried now if the defence can provide enough evidence that Dhuran recorded Tyler because he wanted to keep an eye on his stuff the jury may find reasonable doubt.
B
No. 7 · MKe wrote, “So the witnesses are all dissing Clementi?” But they weren’t dissing Clementi. They were stating what happened, including what Ravi had said to them. If you
want to convict Ravi of invading privacy, as opposed to trying to invade privacy, you have to show that he in fact invaded someone’s privacy. That’s why the DA called these witnesses.
My guess (so far, and of course subject to change as more comes out in the trial): Ravi will be convicted of one, maybe two, counts of invasion of privacy, but not of a bias charge and probably not of obstructing justice or witness tampering (he seems to have been acting like a scared 18 year old simply trying to put what he did in the best possible light given Molly Wei’s testimony about his text messages). So far, it is not like he threatened Molly Wei to get her to testify the way he would have liked, although more may come out as the trial continues.
Molly Wei in fact committed a crime, which is why she got a few hundred hours of community service: she apparently knew what was going on after seeing a few seconds of it and turned on the web cam a second time so some friends could see, although only for a couple of seconds. She might not have realized that it was illegal (as opposed to tacky, disrespectful, and rude), which may be one reason for her entering a pretrial intervention program. For the first time, perhaps she didn’t know what Ravi wanted her to view. For the second, there is no question. The detail about her friends seeing it was not in the earlier reports – originally I thought she might have been more of a passive participant as that information was not available.
Cam
@Austin: said…
“So far I haven’t heard what Ravi did that was so criminal.
Obviously, its unfortunate that Clementi commit suicide,
but I have trouble that Clementi overreacting somehow makes Ravi criminal.”
________________________________
Why do we consistently get people posting on here that Ravi shouldn’t be on trial for Clementi’s suicide? HE ISN’T Right up there in the article it stated…
“Ravi is charged with invasion of privacy for filming two of Clementi’s gay trysts, as well as bias intimidation, witness tampering and hindering arrest.”
He was originally charged with invasion of privacy with a possible bias intimidation. Then because of his later actions trying to obstruct justice he was charged with witness tampering and hindering arrest.
There is nothing in the charges to do with Clementi’s suicide, I’m not sure why everybody keeps insisting that there is.
MKe
@B: I agree I had just been noticing the frustration from some people regarding this case and I kind of get it. We know exactly the way this crime happened, thanks to IMs and texts, that were private and maybe shouldn’t have been exposed, but were anyway. And now they are trying to convince the jury that this kid was the victim of some gay annoying roommate who invited shady people over who would steal things. Well that’s not the way it seemed in their IMs and texts.
jackpapa
There’s another layer to this testimony. That is the suggestion that Davi wasn’t spying on Clementi because he suspected he was gay – he was spying on M.B. because he suspected him to be ‘shady’. Do we as a society condone spying against anyone? No we value privacy to such an extent that we have laws protecting it, we have acknowledged rights to it. And on those occasions when the LAW proactively waives that right in a specific case, it is done so on the basis of EVIDENVE of a crime or criminal intent. There is no evidence of that here. What we have here is a young man of some self-granted entitlement invading he pivacy of TWO people who had a reasonable expectation of having it. And not just invading that privacy on the weak basis of property rights (because if that were the case there would be no need to netcast the feed) but rather with the clear intended impact of completely obliterating that privacy. That is not acceptable behaviour. Davi was old enough to know better. Terrible consequences of his act have, and will, ensue.