Jury selection in the trial against Dharun Ravi, who is accused of spying on and harassing the late Tyler Clementi, begins today.
The trial will be televised live internationally.
Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge to his death on September 22, 2010, three days after Ravi filmed him kissing another man in their Rutgers dorm room, using a hidden webcam.
The case is starting now, but the Clementi-Ravi story has generated global interest from the beginning, with speculation about Ravi’s intentions and the appropriate punishment for his actions. (A must-read New Yorker story goes into great detail.)
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Ravi is charged with multiple counts of invasion of privacy, witness tampering, hindering prosecution and bias intimidation. After rejecting a plea deal in December that would have avoided jail time, the 19-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison.
Source: ABC News, New Yorker
Cam
“”The global spotlight on the New Brunswick, NJ courtroom case comes in the wake of much online attention to the case, which casts Ravi as the evil villain who outed Clementi by recording his gay-sex activities and broadcasting it to the world. In reality, Clementi had recently come out of the closet before the incident, and Ravi only witnessed very brief snippets of gay activity (just kissing, no sex),””
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Is this a joke? You left out the part where he blasted out the fact that he was going to be broadcasting Clemente’s encounter over the web saying something along the lines of “H
e asked for the room tonight, tune in to watch him get fucked.”
As for him not being outted because he had “Recently Come out”…Really? Did he come out to everybody at the school? His parents? His family? The entire faculty?
I’m just curious, did Ravi’s attorney pay for this posting or what?!
OHreally
“jokingly classist”? Are you suggesting classism and racial stereotyping are acceptable yet homophobia is not?
Marie Cohn
The New Yorker’s writer paints a more sympathetic picture of Ravi, so a conviction on the major counts is by no means guaranteed. His lawyers have enough confidence he can be found “not guilty” so they refused a plea deal.
MKe
I’ll bet he really wants to search about his jurors past online so he can profile them lol.
Larry
after ravi denied the plea deal for community service only…he deserves some strong punishment because he is an arrogant shit but he will not be found guilty on all charges. he is an ass and his charmed life needs to have the luster tarnished (big time) but he should not get 10 years
B
Cam wrote, “Is this a joke? You left out the part where he blasted out the fact that he was going to be broadcasting Clemente’s encounter over the web saying something along the lines of “He asked for the room tonight, tune in to watch him get fucked.””
Hey, Ravi didn’t say that. It was something like “I dare you to log in tonight” with no details as to exactly what a viewer would see. Plausibly, he could have intended to broadcast a video of himself with wide-eyed expressions as he watched whatever was going on in his room. My guess is that he’ll use that ambiguity as part of his defense, taking advantage of the requirement that the prosecution has to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
KyleW
@Larry: Agreed Larry. Ravi is an ass, but he shouldn’t have to go to prison for 10 years because his roommate had issues. Everyone is pleading forebearance for Cruise’s son after his outburst, reminding us that tthe stuff he said is just the stupidity of his youth, and this is not different. Not saying for one second what he did was acceptable, but it’s not like he shot the kid, or even wished ill on him.
This is just a lose lose situation.
The only possible win, is that other bullies of all types might just hesitate a moment before doing something similar.
mike
I hope he has to spend every day of the ten years in prison
Dave
We don’t know what will happen with the trial. I’m not saying that Ravi is innocent or that he didn’t do something horrible but there’s always the possibility that a jury won’t find him guilty at all. Look what happened to both Casey Anthony and Amanda Knox who were both involved in murder and who are both sociopaths.
Jason
Cant believe ppl defending Ravi, he should get 10 years and get deported to India after jailtime. He spied, tried to broadcast, which accounts to bullying, he altered tweets, encouraged wei to lie to police, etc. He made too many mistakes to ask for leniency. He committed crimes and tried to cover up. He has been dishonest all along in his words and actions.
Abel
@Jason, I agree with you. Kick his ass out of the country AFTER a nice long prison sentence.
B
No. 10 · Jason wrote, “Cant believe ppl defending Ravi, he should get 10 years and get deported to India after jailtime. He spied, tried to broadcast, which accounts to bullying, he altered tweets, encouraged wei to lie to police, etc.”
I don’t think people are really defending him. It’s worth remembering, however, that prosecutors sometimes pile on charges where the chances of a conviction are minor, as encouragement for a defendant to take a plea bargain.
A lot will depend on the details – if he erased text messages before the prosecutor or the police asked to see them, he can claim he was upset about a suicide and didn’t want to see reminders of what an ass he had been. Similarly he can claim that he changed a twitter post because what he had posted seemed rather crass given the suicide. If both were done early enough, he can claim that he had no idea that the police would have any interest in either and was simply embarrassed. If he knows enough about computers, he could claim that it was obvious to him that Twitter had backups that the police would access.
He’ll have more trouble explaining away allegations of witness tampering. He’ll have to claim that his intention was not to hide evidence, but rather to not be described as a jerk and that his intention was misinterpreted. If you read the New Yorker article, it would appear that Molly Wei didn’t think very highly of Ravi, so he’d plausibly have a reason to ask her not to let her emotions exaggerate anything she might tell the police. It’ll depend on what he actually told her – you can be pretty sure the defense will tear into Molly Wei to make her seem vindictive if necessary, particularly if what she heard was really incriminating.
Whether a jury will buy any of it is, of course, a different question.
BTW, there may be some important details that have not been made public: according to http://www.spattersonlaw.com/judge-does-not-drop-ravis-charges_blog_2652.html “A key element in getting the charges against Ravi dropped, involved information regarding Clementi’s state of mind before his death. That information was not presented to the grand jury that indicted Ravi.” Also the same source (a criminal defense lawyer’s blog) claims that “Declaring that the whole thing was an accident, Ravi explained to his attorney that when he realized what was being recorded between Clementi and the other man that he immediately turned the camera off. He went on to further explain that he had initially only turned the camera on to avoid his iPad being stolen.”
One question I’d have is that, if Ravi thought this guy might steal Ravi’s iPad, why didn’t Ravi take it with him? It’s not like an iPad is a bulky, hard-to-carry item.
Kylew
@Jason: Well of course he’s been dishonest like anyone here never lies – but his crimes amount to what? Invasion of privacy? Newspapers do it every day. Writing nasty things. Same again for the newspapers. He changed some tweets?
Newspapers do worse than this every single day, and destroy lives, but I don’t hear people railing against them. Ravi is just a stupid, spiteful brat who thinks his little bit of wealth makes him more important than he is. But he’s not an evil master criminal who is any future threat,more than any other low level bully.
At most, he should get some community service and six months of counselling sessions.
Urgo2man
No prison time (why waste the taxpayer’s money?)…just deport his ugly mug back to India where he belongs.