The Reason magazine staff is very, very upset that Dharun Ravi was convicted:
I hope future generations will find the preceding paragraph as baffling as I do. In what the Newark Star-Ledger calls a “high profile case that sparked awareness of cyber-bullying and harassment of gay teenagers,” Ravi cammed roommate Clementi canoodling with another man, then tweeted about it. Shortly thereafter Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge.
Jacob Sullum on the Clementi/Ravi case: Lack of evidence that Ravi’s snooping led to any shaming, outing, or any other public response. Why giving a person 10 years for having expressed unpopular ideas is not different from old-school thought-crime prosecution. How deleting an embarrassing tweet can get you time for “hindering apprehension.”
Here’s what actually happened, from the story Reason linked to:
Ferreira said the jurors were not in conflict with each other during deliberations.
“I’m actually satisfied with the verdict. It was very hard, very difficult. Nothing means we would be personally biased toward the defendant. You have to look at all the facts and the evidence. That’s why you have 24 counts guilty and 11 not guilty. Witness statements and the evidence were not there to prove those,” he said. “This was very difficult, but it was a really good experience. You feel like justice has been served.”
Prosecutors presented more than 20 witnesses over 12 days of testimony, including students who lived in Ravi and Clementi’s dormitory, Davidson Hall, law enforcement officials, Rutgers residence life staff and computer experts.
Clementi, a shy violinist from Ridgewood, and Ravi, a tech-savvy computer geek from Plainsboro, were seemingly ill-matched from the start. The two roommates were worried about living together from nearly the moment they learned each other’s names, according to documents filed in court.
When Clementi asked to use their room on Sept. 19, 2010, Ravi went to the room of a friend, Molly Wei, and turned on his webcam from her laptop. Witnesses for the state testified that Ravi built an ”automatic accept” feature on his webcam to access it from elsewhere.
Wei and Ravi saw Clementi and M.B. kissing for a few seconds, and Ravi tweeted to his followers that he saw his “roommate making out with a dude.”
Two days later, when Clementi asked for the room again, Ravi set up the webcam and double-checked that it was angled at Clementi’s bed, according to two students who testified. He also dared his Twitter followers to chat him during the hours Clementi had asked for their room.
One witness testified that Ravi was “uncomfortable” having a gay roommate. Another read a text message in which Ravi explained his computer would “keep the gays away.”
But on cross-examination, about a half dozen friends and dorm neighbors of Ravi’s told Steve Altman, his lawyer, that Ravi never said anything malicious or derogatory about his gay roommate or about gay people in general.
After the prosecution rested last Thursday, the defense called seven witnesses in quick succession, all friends and co-workers of Ravi’s father who said they had never heard him say anything negative about gay people, though they had never actually discussed the topic with him.
Throughout the trial, Altman maintained that Ravi only looked at the webcam to see what was going on in his room because he was put off by M.B.’s scruffy appearance. Ravi told police in a statement that M.B. didn’t acknowledge him, appeared much older than a college student, and he got a “bad vibe” from him.
On the evidence charges, prosecutors said Ravi deleted dozens of relevant text messages and tweets, and tried to influence what Wei told police.
Clementi, who leaped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, came after a series of suicides of other young teenagers around the country who were bullied because they were gay or perceived to be gay.
So while the Reason staff looks at what happened and decided that 2 + 2 = flibberdygidget, the defendant knew precisely what happened, which is why after he intentionally set the camera up, live-tweeted it to all his friends to humiliate Clementi, and then learned his roommate had leaped to his death in shame, he systematically went about erasing the evidence and attempted to coerce one of the material witnesses. He made the connection between this kid’s suicide and what he had done, and so did the jury.
But even that is besides the point, because guess what, Reason- he wasn’t even charged with the kid’s death:
Mr. Ravi, 20, was not charged in Mr. Clementi’s death. He faced 15 counts of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, tampering with evidence and a witness, and hindering apprehension. The jury found that he did not intend to intimidate Mr. Clementi the first night he turned on the webcam to watch. But the jury concluded that Mr. Clementi had reason to believe he had been targeted because he was gay, and in one charge, the jury found that Mr. Ravi had known Mr. Clementi would feel intimidated by his actions.
***The prosecution had pointed out that Mr. Clementi had checked Mr. Ravi’s Twitter feed — where Mr. Ravi told others he had seen his roommate “kissing a dude” — 38 times in the days after the first webcam viewing. Records showed that Mr. Clementi had gone online to request a room change, and a resident assistant testified that Mr. Clementi had complained to him.
***Mr. Ravi’s lawyers argued that he was “a kid” with little experience of homosexuality who had stumbled into a situation that scared him. M.B., who was 30 at the time, had made him nervous, the lawyers argued, so he set up his webcam to keep an eye on his belongings. Mr. Ravi, they argued, was being sarcastic when he had sent messages daring friends to connect to his webcam, or declaring that he was having a “viewing party.”
But prosecutors argued that his frequent messages mentioning Mr. Clementi’s sexuality proved that Mr. Ravi was upset about having a gay roommate from the minute he discovered it through a computer search several weeks before they arrived at Rutgers in fall 2010.
The kid knew what he was doing, the jury understood what he was doing, and you and I all understand that Ravi knew exactly what he was doing. This is no miscarriage of justice, this is the clear application of existing law to a criminal act of bullying, evidence tampering, and attempted witness coercion. He didn’t, as Sullum remarked, simply delete an “embarrassing tweet.” This is no threat to free speech. This is no prosecution for “what someone is thinking.” Free speech advocates have nothing to fear from this prosecution whatsoever. Here is the relevant law for hindering apprehension:
A person commits an offense if, with purpose to hinder the detection, apprehension, investigation, prosecution, conviction or punishment of another for [an offense] OR [a violation of Title 39 of the New Jersey Statutes] OR [a violation of Chapter 33A of Title 17 of the Revised Statutes] (he/she) [refer to appropriate portion of N.J.S.A. 2C:29-3a(1) thru (7)].
While Reason may put quotes o’ sarcasm around hindering apprehension, it is an existing law designed to prosecute those who are attempting to cover up an offense.
And he wasn’t, as Sullum states, simply expressing unpopular ideas. He didn’t say “I hate homos! Being gay is wrong.” Or even something worse, like “All fags should die.” No, he was not expressing ideas popular or unpopular. Instead, what he was doing was systematically shaming and bullying Clementi, offering others a forum to watch him be intimate with a partner, taunting him on twitter for everyone to see, including tweeting about it 38 times or more (I misread- Clementi checked Ravi’s feed 38 times). No, he was not expressing an unpopular opinion, he was targeting Clementi and doing so viciously.
Did Ravi want Clementi to kill himself? I have no way of knowing, and neither does anyone else.
Which is precisely why he was never charged for that.
cathyx
What kind of magazine is Reason Magazine?
4tehlulz
@cathyx: A religious publication focusing on the hidden handjob of the free market.
cathyx
So if it’s a religious mag., it could have an agenda.
kdaug
He hasn’t been through sentencing yet though, right?
David Koch
Feedom isn’t Fee, Bitches.
Calouste
@cathyx:
It’s like Playboy. What’s in the title doesn’t actually appear in the magazine at all.
MikeJ
@cathyx: An ironically titled one?
scav
Activist Juries. How dare they not reflect the majority opinion of the Real’Merca(tm) ?
MobiusKlein
Is deliberate obtuseness a prerequisite for being a libertarian?
Shinobi
The reason commenters do have a point, expecting your roommate not to publicly humiliate you via webcam and twitter for being gay is EXACTLY like being arrested for thought crimes. We may as well be living Equilibrium.
Joshua Norton
When someone bends themselves and the truth in all different directions trying to justify something disgusting, it’s mainly because they are the same type of person and are afraid they’re going to be caught for the same thing.
It’s obvious that the dead kid was a victim but holier-than-thou wingnuttery has to yammer away in sham justification because they’re just like the Ravi punk.
Hunter Gathers
Reason magazine : fighting for your freedom to humiliate gay people since 1968
cathyxc
@Calouste: Do you mean that all the men in the stories are huge and the women are slutty?
Wag
@MobiusKlein:
Yes.
Along with profound stupidity and an inability to see anyone else’s point of view.
4tehlulz
The Founding Fathers clearly wanted everyone to be free to record and distribute videos worldwide to humiliate the gay kids and drive them to suicide.
It’s in the tenth amendment.
reflectionephemeral
Was expecting the Right to treat this guy as some kind of free speech martyr, a victim of mere political correctness, til I saw that he faced not only jail time, but deportation. To India, admittedly, not Latin America, but still, nowhere that would make folks in the movement libertarian/conservative infotainment complex consider him “One of Us”.
This’ll blow over pretty fast, I think.
Sure, you’ve presented a factual rebuttal, but what do facts matter? If this guy’s dad were a white Republican donor, though, we’d hear about it nonstop for awhile.
SP
I swear, no one delivers a spankin’ to Reason like Cole.
FlipYrWhig
A very political academic gay acquaintance of mine posted the Reason piece… approvingly. His take was that the case was unjustly foisting the crimes of American public policy towards LGBT people on an Indian interloper, making it a racist scapegoating verdict. (No, I didn’t get it either.) His point of departure was, like Reason’s, that Ravi was not responsible for Clementi’s suicide… and that wasn’t the charge, so, I mean, whatever.
Mattminus
From the comments:
beltane
Not all assholes are libertarians, but all libertarians are certainly assholes. Reason magazine should just change its name to Asshole magazine and be done with it.
300baud
If you were getting paid by the Kochs to do their dirtywork, you too would rather have the freedom to conceal evidence and influence witnesses.
MobiusKlein
@Wag: Went and read the comments, and yes is the answer.
Deliberate obtuseness is very important. Some people there claim that there is no expectation of privacy in a college dorm room, so it’s not an invasion of privacy to set up a webcam and invite folks to watch.
And this is from libertarians!
Thoughtcrime
@cathyx:
It’s this kind of magazine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_pgzZdf9E&feature=related
4tehlulz
For the libertarian faithful, this guy’s only, albeit cardinal, sin is not charging for the Web stream.
Maude
@kdaug:
No and I don’t know the date or if it has been set.
Governor Christie got a bullying law passed after the death of of the victim. He did come out strongly against bullying.
I am pleased with the verdict.
fasteddie9318
So, basically, Reason‘s organizing principle is that the government is tyrannically oppressing the rights of rich/straight/properly hued or gendered/etc. private citizens and large corporations to behave like oppressive tyrants in their own right, yes?
Suffern ACE
@Mattminus: He. Every time. EVERY Time. Same thing. “Thought police” “Special Rights”. It’s like the Young Republicans in my college 20 years ago went off on an anti-“politically correct” cliff and have been attempting to have the same conversation with themselves the past 20 years.
Gex
To a libertarian, protecting privilege *is* protecting freedom. Straight is privileged over queer, so you know which side libertarians will be on.
Some Guy
Good on you, John. That is an excellent post.
So sick of the right in all its forms acting like cynicism toward law and regulation is some kind of proof. Blecch. This whole thing makes me miserable.
How can one hear of what happened and this unfortunate young man’s irreversible choice and delve into dishonest, mealy-mouthed process arguments. Worse yet, casting one’s ideology as the real victim.
Shameful.
burnspbesq
Juries get it right far more often than they get it wrong. What Ravi did was inexcusable. I hope he gets the maximum sentence possible. Not that it will bring Clementi back, but this kind of behavior needs to be deterred.
Quicksand
Surely the 9/11 terrorists were simply expressing an unpopular idea, as well.
econlibVA
Reason Magazine sucks – but this was a difficult case. The invasion of privacy charge was easy, but the bias charge is hard. Of course, the libtards over at Reason don’t believe in bias charges, but even if you do, I’m not sure if this case is one where bias charges should apply. Sometimes people are just jerks and do awful things – they don’t have to do it out of bias. Ravi did wrong and deserved prison time, but 5-10 years in prison and (possible if not probable) deportation? I’m not so sure about that.
Gex
@MobiusKlein: Of course, there’s no contradiction there, so long as the government didn’t put it there. If your roommate wants to set up a cam for Cinemax after Dark in your room for profit, there’s no trampling of your rights. It’s rational economic actors participating in the free market.
ant
I hope that straight web cam kid has nightmares for the rest of his fucking life.
asshole.
pragmatism
their mask fell off a few weeks ago but they keep yelling, “WE ARE NOT CONSERVATIVES!!!!”. it ain’t working. the invisible hand of the free market of ideas knocked it off.
The Bearded Blogger
What is freedom if not freedom to spy on and publicly humiliate another human being?
The Bearded Blogger
@econlibVA: I am. He deserves that and more.
HeartlandLiberal
If you are in the mood to vomit, go to the Reason article and read the comments. You have been warned, though.
The Bearded Blogger
@MobiusKlein: Yes. Libertarianism only works if you squint real hard
scav
@The Bearded Blogger: It’s not like there wasn’t a large blobby entity agitating for digital sex tapes of college students recently, is it?
The Bearded Blogger
@cathyx: Eponimously oximoronic?
It’s a “”””libertarian”””” magazine.
The Bearded Blogger
@scav: Jabba the Rush will defend Ravi, bet on it.
dedc79
Why oh why can’t they just stick to trying to legalize marijuana?
Thoughtcrime
On a more positive, and delicious, note:
JoyfulA
@econlibVA: His attempted coverup is a very clear crime. He needs to learn how to treat people decently and how to follow the law; if society is lucky, the trial has already taught him that lesson.
He does deserve jail time. But 5-10 years sounds like too much.
Jeff Fecke
I used to be a libertarian. I know, I’m sorry too. But here’s the thing: libertarianism’s core principle is that one has the right to do whatever one wants so long as it does not interfere with someone else’s right to same. It’s not a bad idea, albeit one that gets difficult to make work once society has more than five people in it.
What blows my mind here is that Ravi was arrested and charged with what is absolutely and unquestionably a violation of that libertarian First Principle. Ravi spied on someone. He invaded his privacy. He shared intimate details with others. And this violation pushed his victim into suicide. In short, Ravi’s right to be a douche on the internet interfered with Clementi’s right to make out with a consenting individual in private, a clear violation of property rights.
In short, even by the ludicrously narrow standards of what libertarians consider a crime, Ravi committed a crime. And even still, the libertarians defend him.
FlipYrWhig
@Jeff Fecke: Think of how crazy it is to take this case and get out of it “giving a person 10 years for having expressed unpopular ideas.”
Sooner or later we’ll probably hear that Ravi is a “whistleblower” under the jackbooted heel of Big Government.
beergoggles
I’m guessing if there was brutal rape involved, it would be more in keeping with their randian principles? Also too, there’s no right to privacy in libertarianville. It’s not even mentioned in the constitution, so there.
Elizabelle
Haven’t followed the case much, but it’s sad, and I hope Ravi does some time.
A promising young musician dead.
Bullying and cruelty need not be tolerated.
Roger Moore
@MobiusKlein:
Yes, to the point of complete disregard for reality. But I think you knew that already.
Elizabelle
@Calouste:
Memorable, sir or madam.
Clone12
Reason, Pravda-upon-DuPont
Caravelle
Small nitpick : as far as I can tell the 38 times or more refers to the number of times Clementi checked Ravi’s twitter feed, not the actual number of tweets Ravi made.
megamahan
Great post, John. There is one thing I’d like to clarify, however. You said:
However, the article you quoted said:
This isn’t saying that Ravi tweeted about it 38 times. It’s saying that Clementi checked Ravi’s feed 38 times after finding out about it. Either way, Ravi is guilty, of course.
megamahan
Damn you, Caravelle! You beat me to it. :)
kc
Did Ravi want Clementi to kill himself? I have no way of knowing, and neither does anyone else.
Oh, come on. There’s zero evidence that Ravi wanted Clemente to kill himself.
The New Yorker had an interesting article about the case recently. One of the things that struck me was that Clemente wrote a suicide note, and the police have never released it – the defense has not seen it. I don’t quite understand how that can be true.
Btw, comments look funny. Is that part of the site redesign?
Shinobi
@kc: I guess the question that has to be asked is what, really, is the goal of most bullying? I don’t think it is to get the other person to commit suicide, but I’m not really sure what the point of being relentlessly cruel to others is.
And I”m sure that most bullies don’t think they are doing this in order to make someone else commit suicide. But that is all too often the result of their actions.
Caravelle
@megamahan: It’s pretty impressive we both thought of it at exactly the same time, considering I’d checked before posting and nobody had brought it up that I could see :)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Ravi’s gay or bi and just won’t admit it. Seriously why would a straight guy set up a webcam to watch two men have sex? This is wasn’t a one time only. Not even for the LUZ.
The same old hypocrite game, Ravi was getting his closet gay on watching his roomate do it, then when the guilt hit projecting it on to his roommate.
slim's tuna provider
any jersey lawyer care to comment whether he might get the max? also, as bazelon and the new yorker article both point out, he turned down a pretty sweet deal (no jail, no deportation).
tangentially related but important note to my fellow immigrants: friends don’t let friends who are eligible for citizenship not apply for citizenship! that’s how you get deported on top of everything else.
Steeplejack
“Canoodling”? Seriously? Who uses that outside of a Dear Abby column? Another reason to hate Reason.
catpal
Thanks for this great reply to the idiots that think that bullying and harassment is just A-OK. anyone who supports what this Ravi guy did, is an a-hole.
I hope this conviction gets the message out there to Stop The Harassment and Bullying of anyone YOU perceive to be different than you.
FlipYrWhig
@Steeplejack: With “cammed” in there too, it sounds like one of those weird Hollywood publications like Daily Variety.
Steeplejack
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, it’s like spanning the decades with bad lingo.
Darkrose
I’m glad he got convicted, and I hope he doesn’t go to jail. This may sound contradictory, but sending a 19-year-old to prison for 10 years is not going to get at the root of the problem, which is a lack of empathy. It will almost certainly make that tendency worse.
Rita R.
@econlibVA:
As you said, the invasion of privacy charges were a slam dunk, as were the hindering prosecution counts. But from the legal analyses I’ve heard of the verdict, the jury actually acquitted Ravi of all the bias intimidation charges related to whether he acted out of bias against Clementi because he was gay. They jury found he didn’t. The bias intimidation charge — and I think it was just one — that he was convicted of related to whether Clementi felt intimidated because of Ravi’s action, and could reasonably feel that way and feel that it was based on his sexual orientation. Him checking Ravi’s tweets 38 times was apparently the key to that conviction. Legally murkier, IMO.
That bias intimidation conviction doubled the possible sentence from 5 years to 10, but these same analysts said Ravi would likely get less than that considering his age at the time and the fact that he didn’t have any previous criminal record. Maybe something like 3 years. More problematic, really, is the potential for deportation. He was an idiot for not taking the plea deal.
rb
@Darkrose: Second this. Prison isn’t going to help matters.
rb
@Rita R.: He was an idiot for not taking the plea deal.
A plea deal involves pleading guilty, which would put him at the mercy of the INS apparatus regarding his staying here. It always seemed to me he should plead, but you have to figure his legal team thought that would be a dangerous roll of the dice.
In hindsight…. well.
rb
@FlipYrWhig: There’s an element of truth to this in my opinion (not the Reason piece, which is typical dreck, but in your friend’s take.) It seems to me the jury has done an excellent job here, but you do have to wonder whether the prosecution would have been as zealous if the immigration statuses and races of the two young men had been reversed. In addition, if we consider the public statements made by our Congressional leaders and clergy on a daily basis, Ravi’s tweets and words absolutely pale in comparison in their (relatively) quaint homophobia.
No question his conduct was vicious and deserving of punishment, not to mention the fact that in the (very balanced in my opinion) New Yorker article he comes across as a clueless, entitled prick, and classist and homophobic to boot. But that in itself is not a crime.
As compared to the voices being raised in righteous condemnation of Ravi with the benefit of hindsight, the relative silence concerning our culture’s saturation with, and our leaders’ casual trafficking in, homophobia is deafening.
Alexander
I really don’t want to be the voice of Reason here, but dude. Sure, Ravi wasn’t charged for Clementi’s death, but he was charged because of Clementi’s death. And he will almost certainly be sentenced to whatever he’s sentenced to because of it, too.
Alexander
I really don’t want to be the voice of Reason here, but dude. Sure, Ravi wasn’t charged for Clementi’s death, but he was charged because of Clementi’s death. And he will almost certainly be sentenced to whatever he’s sentenced to because of it, too.
Ajay
Dont know about Reason and dont care about their reasoning. I cant see any reason for this conviction(although i expected it). What did he do wrong here? Yes, he was a moron; so what? He is 19; people do stupid pranks all the time, especially at that age. Jail achieves nothing. I am curious, if most here think had he done this to his hetrosexual roommate, would that be conviction/jail worthy?
Rita R.
@rb:
But it would’ve been to lesser charges, which might’ve been less likely to get him deported. Part of the deal as well was that the prosecutors would speak on his behalf to help him avoid deportation. I don’t blame Ravi so much as his attorney for not convincing him to take it.
Ajay
@Rita R.:
I personally wouldnt have taken the deal. It matters a great if you know you did nothing wrong (worthy of a crime). Hindsight is 20-20, but you need to live with what you believe.
rb
@Rita R.: Part of the deal as well was that the prosecutors would speak on his behalf to help him avoid deportation.
Right, I understand this. My assumption has been that the prosecutors speaking on his behalf would have meant jack and squat. I may have an overly jaundiced view of the INS system, but nothing I have ever (like, ever) seen has made me feel that I am too cynical where our treatment of immigrants is concerned.
John S.
@Ajay:
I’m going to secretly plant a webcam in your bedroom and then put a live feed of you having sex with someone on the Internet. Maybe you have a spouse who sees it and in a fit of rage decides to kill you.
No blood on my hands, amirite?
Biff Longbotham
Bravo, Mr. Cole.
gaz
as it always is with the reason posts here:
The post was not bad…
but the picture is just friggin awesome. i laugh at it every time.
just sayin’
rb
@John S.: No one was viewed having sex, or even unclothed. Ravi’s conduct was bad enough without exaggerating what actually happened.
Ajay
@John S.:
Who says about the feed being on internet? Also, he was 18 years old when he did this. No one is saying what he did was good.
So my wife kills me because you taped me having sex. I still dont see why you should go to jail for my killing. Also, Ravi isnt responsible for the death, not even remotely. This trial is happening only because he committed suicide.
You have decided the case without having facts in front of you.
gaz
@Ajay: Actually a Jury decided the case, and chances are they had more facts in front of them than you or I ever will.
You also seem to be glossing over the fact that they did not charge him with causing Clementi’s death.
But rather convering up evidence, harassment, etc…
Seems you have decided your version of the case, without the facts in front of you.
And no, this isn’t to be read as an implicit endorsement of John S’s comment
as far as I am concerned you’re both wrong.
But your comment struck me as particularly mendacious and basically hypocritical (based on your last line)
Sammi
Ravi set up the webcam to target Clementi because he was gay. If clementi were straight and requested the room to hook up with a female, Ravi would not have spied and tweeted all his friends about it. Ravi would have wanted to know what he could do to get just as lucky and get some private room time and all his dorm friends would have been repulsed by his spying. Ravi set up the webcam to ridicule Clementi because he was gay.
gaz
@Sammi: I think so too. But it doesn’t matter what I think. The jury pretty much took care of that. as it should be.
Jess
I’m always puzzled (but no longer surprised) by how consistently Libertarians fail to live up to their own core principles. Why should a commitment to skepticism, personal freedom and free thought lead to such asinine positions? Innate selfishness, maybe? I’m somewhat attracted to the ideas, but continually put off by the way they’re used and, in my view, abused.
Michael Shermer, for example (a contributor to Reason), has written some really interesting stuff, but there’s weird undercurrent of arrogant obliviousness in many of his discussions. He was raised as a religious fundamentalist, so maybe he never really got over the mental programing that resists other viewpoints.
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
You mean other than destroy evidence and tamper with a potential witness, both of which are crimes in and of themselves even if, as in this case, you end up being found not guilty of the underlying crime?
I know it’s hard for people to understand this, but lying to prosecutors is itself a crime, even if you end up being found not guilty of the original crime. So he was pretty much screwed as soon as he tried to cover his tracks because that is illegal in and of itself.
tjproudamerican
I usually agree with John Cole, but I agree with @Ajay.
The question before us is this: would a roommate be prosecuted like this had the roommate who was taped been heterosexual?
Here is a reasonable interpretation of the verdict based on the fact that the jury did NOT find that Ravi intimidated the suicide roomate’s lover:
“So, the jury believed that Ravi did not invade Clementi’s privacy for the purpose of intimidating Clementi over his sexual orientation. But they thought that Ravi should have known that Clementi would feel intimidated, and that Clementi believed he was intimidated, and so Ravi is guilty and going to jail.
“Is that how we want our hate crime laws to work? Any time we feel we’re being singled out because of our race, religion, or sexual orientation, we’re victims of a hate crime, even if we’re not being singled out because of our race, religion, or orientation? We’ve moved beyond punishing what is in a person’s heart, and moved straight to punishing an assailant for what’s in his victim’s heart.” http://abovethelaw.com/2012/03/breaking-verdict-in-the-dharun-ravi-case/
Reason and Hit & Run may be terrible people, but a prosecutor who offers a young man a Plea Deal as of the crime were a youthful and stupid misdemeanor, but then prosecutes the defendant as if the case were a RICO level Crime of the Millennium, and the fact that Ravi was prosecuted for what the Jury intuited that the suicide roommate felt are reasons to remember that prosecutors have too much power.
tjproudamerican
Do the hate crime affeciionados believe that Ravi should get ten years in prison on each count and then be deported?
And will anyone who believes this is a fair verdict and jury decision address @ Ajay’s question: would a roommate be prosecuted like this had the roommate who was taped been heterosexual?
Yutsano
@tjproudamerican:
Heterosexuals are not a repressed population. And half his crime was covering up what he did from prosecutors. Premise fail.
mai naem
He should have taken the plea deal. From what I understood, he was going to get probation. My guess is that he would have avoided deportation. He may not have gotten citizenship but I bet they wouldn’t have deported him. Part of me feels bad for him because part of it is definitely being young and dumb, but what really got me was the texting to Molly Wei, trying to lie about what happened. And I don’t believe the crap about him trying to protect his stuff. There is no reason to point the camera on Tyler’s bed for crying out loud. Also too, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is gay. I could insert the typical prison roommate joke here but he can sit in his jail cell and ponder about how his college roommate would probably still be alive if it hadn’t been for his prurient interests.
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
Assuming the same result (ie the roommate’s suicide), then, yes, I do think the verdict would have been the same.
The cold fact remains that Clementi is dead, and his death can be partially traced to Ravi’s actions. I know you guys son’t think that a person’s death is a big deal, but most people do.
The Sailor
“More problematic, really, is the potential for deportation.”
He’s rich. India isn’t Somalia, and even Somalia isn’t so bad if you’re rich. He’s not being sent back to a repressive regime, he’s being denied living in the US. As he should be. We don’t need more assholes.
Some Loser
Maybe I am just unsympathetic towards unapologetic bullies, but I think jail-time and deportation is most appropriate for his crimes. It keeps an evil bastard off the streets.
Neal
I took this photo and I am honored that it is used here. I saw this at the McDonald’s in Council Bluffs, snapped the photo, and then proceeded to crack up for like the next 20 minutes just thinking about it.