NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A jury convicted a former Rutgers University student, Dharun Ravi, of hate crimes and invasion of privacy Friday for using a webcam to spy on his roommate kissing another man in their dorm room.
It's only okay if the government does it, kids.
And aren't all crimes hate crimes? Who commits a crime against because they love you and it was for your own good (outside of bankers)?
The jury also found Ravi guilty of tampering with evidence and witnesses for trying to change Twitter and text messages in which he had encouraged others to watch the webcam.
It's only okay if the government does it, kids.
Ravi’s roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days after Ravi viewed him on the webcam. The case became a symbol of the struggles facing gay, lesbian, and bisexual teenagers and the problem of cyberbullying in an era when laws governing hate crimes have not kept up with evolving technology....
What about governments that bully and murder millions in wars?
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for about two days after more than three weeks of testimony. Judge Glenn Berman set a sentencing date of May 21 and told Ravi’s lawyers they had six weeks to file papers in any appeal. Ravi’s passport has been surrendered; prosecutors had said he could face possible deportation to his native India.
The case was rare because almost none of the facts were in dispute. Ravi’s lawyers agreed that he had set up a webcam on his computer, then gone into a friend’s room and viewed Clementi kissing a man he had invited to his room three weeks after arriving at Rutgers in September 2010. Ravi sent Twitter and text messages telling others what he had seen, and urged them to watch a second viewing, then deleted messages after Clementi killed himself. That account had been established by a long trail of electronic evidence, from Twitter feeds and cellphone records, dormitory surveillance cameras, dining hall swipe cards, and a “netflow’’ analysis showing when and how computers in the dormitory connected.
What the jury had to decide, and what set off debate outside as well as inside the courtroom, was what Ravi and Clementi were thinking at the time.
A jury shouldn't be asked to decide that. It makes a mockery of the facts.
Did Ravi set up the webcam because he had a pretty good idea that he would see Clementi in an intimate moment? Did he target Clementi and the man he was with because they were gay? And was Clementi in fear?
Without Clementi to speak for himself, that last question was perhaps the most difficult to determine, and questions the jurors sent from their deliberation room suggested they struggled with it.
The prosecution had pointed out that Clementi had checked Ravi’s Twitter feed - where Ravi told others he had seen his roommate “kissing a dude’’ - 38 times in the days after the first webcam viewing. Records showed that Clementi had gone online to request a room change, and a resident assistant testified that Clementi had complained to him.
But the defense argued that if Clementi had felt intimidated, he would have accepted when the resident assistant offered him another place to stay, and he would not have invited his boyfriend back to the room.
Clementi’s suicide came up only in passing during the trial. Still, the death defined the trial, turning what might have been a peeping Tom case into something far more grave.
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Related: Slow Saturday Special: Peeping Tom Trial
"‘Viewing party’ alleged in Rutgers case" Associated Press, March 06, 2012
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A former Rutgers University student accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate’s intimate encounter with another man said someone at Rutgers was planning a “viewing party’’ with beer and rum to watch the dorm room liaison, a high school friend testified Monday.
The revelation came in testimony from Michelle Huang, a Cornell University student who says Dharun Ravi told her about it in a text message on Sept. 21, 2010.
Ravi, 20, is being tried on 15 criminal counts, including invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, and several charges accusing him of trying to cover his tracks. Bias intimidation is a hate crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that Ravi intentionally tried to humiliate Clementi. Huang testified that Ravi urged her to video chat him so she could see the webcam footage....
People were planning a “viewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer’’ to watch the stream of video from the webcam that night, Huang said. It was the first mention of a planned party in the trial, which had its seventh day of testimony Monday.
Huang testified that after Clementi had killed himself, Ravi texted her that the talk of a viewing party was a joke.
Witnesses have said the webcam was not working that night. But Douglas Rager, a former university police detective, testified Monday that when he went to inspect the dorm room Sept. 23, he noticed that Ravi’s webcam was “angled directly at Tyler’s bed.’’
Ravi is not charged in Clementi’s death, and the judge has been cautious about how the suicide would factor into the trial.
Prosecutors are precluded from linking the spying allegations to the suicide. Defense lawyers cannot make the case that Clementi killed himself for other reasons.
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Also see: Jurors see interview of Rutgers defendant
DA rests in Rutgers webcam spy trial - Nation
Rutgers student on trial declines to testify
Rutgers webcam case set to go to jury
