finediony New Jersey news: Dharun

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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Dharun Ravi freed from jail after serving 20 days

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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Dharun Ravi to report to jail in Rutgers webcam case

GEOFF MULVIHILLNEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A former Rutgers University student convicted of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate is poised to start serving his 30-day jail sentence.

Dharun Ravi, 20, is scheduled to turn himself in Thursday at the Middlesex County Jail.

In March, a jury found Ravi guilty of 15 criminal charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. He used his webcam in September 2010 to stream - and view - seconds of live video of roommate Tyler Clementi and another man kissing, and told others they could watch another encounter two days later. Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge just days after the ordeal began.

Ravi could have remained free while prosecutors appeal his sentence. But during a hearing Wednesday, he agreed to waive his protection from double jeopardy. He is now not allowed to argue that he's already served his time if prosecutors prevail on their appeal and he receives a longer sentence.

Ravi requested permission Tuesday to start serving his sentence as he apologized for the first time for his actions, which he described in a statement as "thoughtless, insensitive, immature, stupid and childish." In court Wednesday, Ravi answered questions from his lawyer and Berman but did not say any more about his apology.

Ravi's lawyer Joseph Benedict said he's still appealing the conviction altogether.

It's not clear whether Ravi will serve the full 30 days. In most cases, New Jersey county jail inmates with 30-day sentences automatically have them reduced by 10 days for good behavior. A warden at Middlesex County Jail was not immediately available Wednesday to say whether that would apply to Ravi.

His lawyer said Ravi would also begin working on his 300 hours of community service and start paying the more than $11,000 in fines and assessments that are part of his punishment.

Some gay rights activists have portrayed Clementi's story as a prime example of the consequences of bullying young gays. Ravi's defenders see him as a scapegoat for a death that they don't believe he was responsible for - and was not charged with.

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(Copyright ©2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Dharun Ravi case will continue, despite sentencing

By GEOFF MULVIHILLNEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- The legal saga is far from over for a former Rutgers University student sentenced to 30 days jail for using a webcam to spy on his roommate kissing another man. The cultural fallout could continue, too.

Dharun Ravi, 20, was sentenced Monday, two months after a jury convicted him of 15 criminal counts, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation and seven counts dealing with covering up a crime.

The jury found that in September 2010, he used his webcam to spy on roommate Tyler Clementi, who killed himself days later after viewing dozens of times Ravi's tweets about what he saw. One of them said, in part: "I saw him making out with a dude. Yay."

Judge Glenn Berman's sentence was far less than the 10-year maximum for bias intimidation - and apparently less than prosecutors were expecting.

Within hours after the sentence was imposed, the Middlesex County prosecutor's office announced it would appeal, arguing the sentence was too light for such serious crimes.

Ravi's lawyers are also likely to appeal the conviction itself on several of the counts. They say the jury got it wrong by convicting him at all. They have until July 5 to appeal.

In court Monday, a judge denied Ravi's motion to overturn the conviction and either dismiss the charges entirely or grant a new trial.

There have been clues in court filings and arguments to some issues might be appealed.

Ravi's lawyer, Steven Altman, raised a significant one in court Monday when he said Ravi did not get a fair trial, in part because of a ruling the judge made last year denying Ravi and his lawyers access to some documents found on Clementi's computer.

Berman, who reviewed them, said that they were not pertinent to the case.

Altman continues to take issue. He says that although the judge made clear that Ravi was not charged with Clementi's death, his suicide loomed over the case, making Clementi's state of mind important.

The documents may have shed light on that, he said. "Only your honor knows what was in it," Altman told the judge.

The story of Clementi and Ravi could resonate outside of court, too.

Clementi's parents have launched a foundation in their son's honor to address issues including online civility, bullying and suicide.

Ravi's supporters are calling for lawmakers to change to the state's statute on bias intimidation so someone in Ravi's position in the future would not be convicted of what is widely called a hate crime.

They have also sent a petition to Gov. Chris Christie requesting a pardon for Ravi.

With so much in flux, even the next step in in question. The judge told Ravi to report to jail on May 31. But the appeals could push back that reporting date.

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Monday, May 21, 2012

Dharun Ravi sentenced to 30 days in jail

By GEOFF MULVIHILLORADELL, N.J. -- A former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to watch his roommate kiss another man days before the roommate killed himself was sentenced Monday to 30 days in jail.

A judge also gave 20-year-old Dharun Ravi three years of probation, resolving the first part of the legal odyssey in an unusual, emotional and tragic case dealing with the consequences of bad decisions by young people in the Internet age - but certainly not ending the debate surrounding New Jersey's tough hate-crimes laws.

Judge Glenn Berman said he would not recommend Ravi be deported to India, where he was born and remains a citizen. But Ravi was ordered to get counseling and to pay $10,000 that would go to a program to help victims of bias crimes.

The case began in September 2010 when Ravi's randomly assigned freshman-year roommate asked Ravi to stay away so he and a guest could have privacy.

Ravi went to a friend's room and turned on his webcam remotely. Jurors at his trial earlier this year heard that he and the friend saw just seconds of Tyler Clementi kissing the guest, who was identified in court only by the initials M.B. But they told others about it through instant messages and tweets. And later, the friend, Molly Wei, showed a few seconds of the live-streamed video to other residents of the dorm. Wei later entered a pre-trial intervention program that can spare her jail or a criminal record if she meets a list of conditions.

When Clementi, an 18-year-old violinist from Ridgewood, asked for privacy again two days later, Ravi agreed - then told friends how they could access his webcam.

But this time, the webcam was not on when M.B. came over. There was testimony both that Clementi unplugged it and that Ravi himself put it to sleep.

The next night, Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. Jurors learned that he checked Ravi's Twitter feed repeatedly before his suicide.

After the suicide, gay-rights and anti-bullying activists held up Clementi as an example of the horrible consequences of bullying young gays. Even President Barack Obama spoke about the tragedy.

Prosecutors offered Ravi a plea deal that called for no prison time but would have forced him to admit to committing six different crimes. He turned it down.

After a trial that lasted four weeks, Ravi was convicted of all 15 criminal charges he faced, including four counts of the hate crime of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and seven counts accusing him of trying to cover his tracks by tampering with evidence, a witness and other means.

The most complicated and serious counts were bias intimidation, two of which are second-degree crimes punishable by up to 10 years in prison. During legal arguments out of earshot of the jury, Berman called the law on the issue "muddled."

One of the issues: Ravi was convicted on one count only because Clementi reasonably believed he was being targeted for being gay. On that count, the jury found that Ravi did not knowingly or willfully intimidate him. But jurors found on the three other hate-crime counts that Ravi did know he was intimidating his roommate.

Just as Clementi became a symbol for a complicated cause, so has Ravi.

Several hundred supporters rallied at New Jersey's State House last week to denounce the way the state's hate-crime laws were being used on someone they said was not hateful. They were hoping Ravi would not be sent to prison and that the law could be changed so that someone in his situation again would not be found to have committed a hate crime.

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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Dharun Ravi wants hate crime convictions dismissed

by GEOFF MULVIHILLNEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A former Rutgers University student who was found guilty of hate crimes for using a webcam to view his roommate kissing another man has asked a judge to overturn the jury's conviction.

In a legal filing Tuesday, Dharun Ravi's lawyers said the jury convicted him in March despite evidence that he was not guilty of invading the privacy or intimidating roommate Tyler Clementi, who killed himself days after the webcam was used.

And on the most disputed and serious charges - bias intimidation - the lawyers say the law was misused. On some of those counts, the jury found that Ravi did not mean to intimidate Clementi or the other man, but that Clementi reasonably believed he did. Jurors said as much both in their findings in court and in comments afterward to journalists. Copies of some news articles were included with the brief to support Ravi's lawyers' position.

"To criminalize a defendant for a victim's mistaken belief about the defendant's motive would turn the bias intimidation statute into a mockery of itself," wrote the lawyers, Steven Altman and Philip Nettl. It is standard practice for lawyers to ask for a judge to overturn a conviction after a jury delivers it. In Ravi's case, the request is for the judge to acquit Ravi entirely - or at least grant him a new trial.

The lawyers said that the jury was wrong on invasion of privacy charges because the snippets video that Ravi and others saw did not show sexual acts or nudity.

Prosecutors had no immediate comment on the court filing. But they're sure to have more to say in coming weeks as they file papers to recommend a sentence for Ravi.

He could face 10 years in prison when he's sentenced on May 21. And because he's a citizen of India, where he was born, Ravi could also be deported eventually because of the conviction.

The case has enflamed passions.

Almost immediately after his suicide in September 2010, Clementi came to be seen as a symbol of the bullying young gays can face. President Barack Obama spoke out about the case and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres made it a key cause of hers.

Some have come to see Ravi as a victim of an overzealous legal system, a man convicted not so much for what he did but what happened afterward. Last month, former Gov. Jim McGreevey, who left office in 2004 after announcing he was gay, wrote an opinion piece in The Star-Ledger newspaper arguing against a prison sentence for him.

While there is much dispute in court and elsewhere about how the law should be applied in the case, there is little disagreement over the facts.

Jurors heard that Clementi and Ravi, both 18-year-old freshmen from well-off New Jersey suburbs who were assigned at random to be roommates, did not speak much.

A few weeks into the school year, Clementi asked Ravi for the room when he was planning to have over a man he'd met online. Jurors heard that Ravi was nervous about the iPad he'd left in their room and wondered what was going on, so he and a friend turned on his webcam and saw seconds of, as Ravi described in a tweet, his roommate "making out with a dude."

Two nights later, when Clementi asked for privacy again, Ravi obliged. This time, he told friends through text messages, tweets and in-person conversations how they could connect with his webcam to see what happened between Clementi and his guest, who testified at the trial but was only identified by the initials M.B. because he's considered the victim of a sex crime.

But the webcam was off that night.

By the time of that second rendezvous, Clementi had learned that Ravi had watched him and he initiated a request for a room change.

The next night, Clementi, a violinist, made his way to the George Washington Bridge and jumped to his death, leaving behind a final Facebook status: "jumping off the GW bridge, sorry."

Jurors found Ravi guilty of all 15 counts he faced, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence and a witness to try to cover up the other crimes.

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