Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
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I'm posting this thread here since the "news" area seems to have become a backwater-- only 7 posts in the last 2 weeks. If the moderators wishes to move this, of course, that's fine.
This is the New Jersey case that involves the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers student, in Sept 2010, after he was filmed in sexual acts with a male partner, such films being made and promoted on the 'net by his roommate Dharun Ravi
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/nyregion/defendant-guilty-in-rutgers-case.html?ref=nyregion
Jury Finds Spying in Rutgers Dorm Was a Hate Crime
Matt Rainey for The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: March 16, 2012
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student was convicted on Friday on all 15 charges he had faced for using a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with another man, a verdict poised to broaden the definition of hate crimes in an era when laws have not kept up with evolving technology.
Related
“It’s a watershed moment, because it says youth is not immunity,” said Marcellus A. McRae, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.
The student, Dharun Ravi, had sent out Twitter and text messages encouraging others to watch. His roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days after the webcam viewing, three weeks into their freshman year in September 2010.
The case set off a debate about whether hate-crime statutes are the best way to deal with bullying. While Mr. Ravi was not charged with Mr. Clementi’s death, some legal experts argued that he was being punished for it, and that this would result only in ruining another young life. They, along with Mr. Ravi’s lawyers, had argued that the case was criminalizing simple boorish behavior.
But Bruce J. Kaplan, the prosecutor in Middlesex County, applauded the jury for sending a strong message against bias.
“They felt the pain of Tyler,” he said.
Mr. Ravi, 20, wearing a dark suit over his slight frame, sat expressionless as the jury forewoman read the verdict on the first count, of invasion of privacy. But he seemed surprised when she pronounced him guilty on the next charge, of bias intimidation. His eyes popped and he quickly turned his head from the jury. As he left the courtroom in a swarm of television cameras, his mother clutching his arm, he looked straight ahead and said nothing.
The jury also found him guilty of lying to investigators, trying to influence a witness and tampering with evidence after he tried to cover up Twitter and text messages inviting others to join in the viewing.
Some of the charges carry penalties of 5 to 10 years in prison. Mr. Ravi has surrendered his passport; prosecutors said he could face possible deportation to his native India, but that decision would be left to immigration officials. Judge Glenn Berman set sentencing for May 21.
The case was a rare one in which almost none of the facts were in dispute. Mr. Ravi’s lawyers agreed that he had set up a webcam on his computer, and had then gone into a friend’s room and viewed Mr. Clementi kissing a man he met a few weeks earlier on a Web site for gay men. He sent Twitter and text messages urging others to watch when Mr. Clementi invited the man again two nights later, then deleted messages after Mr. 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 “net flow” 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 Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi were thinking.
Had Mr. Ravi set up the webcam because he had a pretty good idea that he would see Mr. Clementi in an intimate moment? Had he targeted Mr. Clementi and the man he was with because they were gay? And had Mr. Clementi been in fear?
Without Mr. Clementi to speak for himself, that last question was perhaps the most difficult to determine, and jurors struggled with it.
“That was the hardest because you really can’t get into someone’s head,” said one, [...]
But the defense’s insistence that Mr. Ravi had set up the webcam because he was afraid Mr. Clementi’s visitor would steal something, he said, rang hollow.
“If I knew someone was going to steal something from me, I would definitely take it with me,” Mr. Leverett said, adding, “Just from the fact of the second incident, it seemed that it was intentional.”
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 13 hours over 3 days after 13 days of testimony.
Reflecting the difficulty of defining hate crimes, it had taken the judge more than an hour simply to instruct the jury on the questions they had to answer to reach a verdict.
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/n...inced-them-of-dharun-ravis-guilt.html?_r=1&hp
Rutgers Case Jurors Say Digital Evidence Crucial
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and BETH KORMANIK
Published: March 16, 2012
Dharun Ravi was not accused of causing the death of Tyler Clementi, his Rutgers University roommate who jumped off a bridge after Mr. Ravi used a webcam to spy on him kissing a man in their dorm and then talked about it on Twitter.
Related
But for members of the jury, some of the most convincing evidence of Mr. Ravi’s guilt came from Mr. Clementi’s own complaints and online behavior after he learned of Mr. Ravi’s spying. And Mr. Clementi’s words echoed even more powerfully because he was not available to repeat them.
“It was pretty hard to think about Tyler, because he wasn’t present to give his thoughts,” said Kashad Leverett, 20, of South Amboy, N.J., after he and 11 other jurors delivered a guilty verdict on all charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, on Friday. “But in the evidence that was provided, it showed that he believed he was being intimidated because of his sexual orientation.”
It was a case with a pixelated paper trail seemingly like no other: Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, text messages, e-mails and other online chatter that together added up to a mountain of proof of Mr. Ravi’s guilt, some jurors said.
“Given the overwhelming amount of evidence, it’s awfully difficult to single out any one thing as the most damaging,” said Susan Matiejunas, 74, a retired state worker from Monroe Township.
Over two days of deliberations, jurors said the only count on which they agreed from the outset was the first, that of invading Mr. Clementi’s privacy the first time Mr. Ravi used his webcam to spy on him. “I would classify us as a tight jury,” said Lynn Audet, 45, a schoolteacher from Perth Amboy. “We all respected each other’s opinions, and we all had a turn to talk.”
Other charges were hotly debated but led fairly quickly to votes to convict on other charges, including evidence tampering and witness tampering, Ms. Audet said. “There were text messages missing from his phone but not missing from other persons’ phones,” she said.
The texts from Mr. Ravi to a prosecution witness, Molly Wei, while she was being questioned by the police were “what convinced me of tampering with a witness,” Ms. Audet said. Mr. Ravi was in Ms. Wei’s room when he turned on his webcam and briefly spied on Mr. Clementi.
The bias intimidation charges were the most difficult to agree upon, jurors said. And what tipped the scales there, they said, was that Mr. Ravi had discussed spying on Mr. Clementi not just once, but repeatedly, even inviting his online friends to watch Mr. Clementi and the other man in a second encounter.
That, said Ms. Audet, is what elevated the case from one of teenagers behaving cruelly and insensitively to a crime.
“To attempt a second time, is what changed my mind,” she said. “A reasonable person would have closed it and ended it there, not tweeted about it.”
The webcam did not work for the second encounter; Mr. Ravi, 20, claimed that he had turned it off. But Ms. Audet said evidence suggested that he was lying. “He was at ultimate Frisbee practice,” she said, and evidence showed he then went to a dining hall. “We came to the conclusion that it was Tyler who turned off the computer to make sure he wasn’t filmed a second time.”
She added, “That hit home big.”
[...]
Mr. Ravi’s lawyer pointed to apologetic texts that Mr. Ravi sent Mr. Clementi, in which he said he had no problem with homosexuality and even had a close friend who was gay. (At almost the exact moment he sent the apology, Mr. Clementi, 18, committed suicide after posting on Facebook, “jumping off the gw bridge sorry”).
Mr. Leverett, a student and Twitter user himself, was unmoved. “I can’t speak for everyone on the jury, but me, personally, I believe it was something where he realized what he did was wrong, and it was just too late to amend for what he did.”
Of the apology, Ms. Audet said: “My first impression was to believe what he said. Then, as we started reading stuff, we found things in there that I interpreted more as covering.
“The friend he claimed was a good friend in high school, that person was never presented as a defense witness. If that person had come forward and said, ‘Hey, we’ve been good friends, and he knows I’m gay and he doesn’t have a problem with it,’ that might have swayed me in the other direction.”
[...]
“Unfortunately, Dharun, he’s learning the lesson a very hard way.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
This is the New Jersey case that involves the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers student, in Sept 2010, after he was filmed in sexual acts with a male partner, such films being made and promoted on the 'net by his roommate Dharun Ravi
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/nyregion/defendant-guilty-in-rutgers-case.html?ref=nyregion
Jury Finds Spying in Rutgers Dorm Was a Hate Crime
Matt Rainey for The New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: March 16, 2012
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student was convicted on Friday on all 15 charges he had faced for using a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with another man, a verdict poised to broaden the definition of hate crimes in an era when laws have not kept up with evolving technology.
Related
“It’s a watershed moment, because it says youth is not immunity,” said Marcellus A. McRae, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.
The student, Dharun Ravi, had sent out Twitter and text messages encouraging others to watch. His roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days after the webcam viewing, three weeks into their freshman year in September 2010.
The case set off a debate about whether hate-crime statutes are the best way to deal with bullying. While Mr. Ravi was not charged with Mr. Clementi’s death, some legal experts argued that he was being punished for it, and that this would result only in ruining another young life. They, along with Mr. Ravi’s lawyers, had argued that the case was criminalizing simple boorish behavior.
But Bruce J. Kaplan, the prosecutor in Middlesex County, applauded the jury for sending a strong message against bias.
“They felt the pain of Tyler,” he said.
Mr. Ravi, 20, wearing a dark suit over his slight frame, sat expressionless as the jury forewoman read the verdict on the first count, of invasion of privacy. But he seemed surprised when she pronounced him guilty on the next charge, of bias intimidation. His eyes popped and he quickly turned his head from the jury. As he left the courtroom in a swarm of television cameras, his mother clutching his arm, he looked straight ahead and said nothing.
The jury also found him guilty of lying to investigators, trying to influence a witness and tampering with evidence after he tried to cover up Twitter and text messages inviting others to join in the viewing.
Some of the charges carry penalties of 5 to 10 years in prison. Mr. Ravi has surrendered his passport; prosecutors said he could face possible deportation to his native India, but that decision would be left to immigration officials. Judge Glenn Berman set sentencing for May 21.
The case was a rare one in which almost none of the facts were in dispute. Mr. Ravi’s lawyers agreed that he had set up a webcam on his computer, and had then gone into a friend’s room and viewed Mr. Clementi kissing a man he met a few weeks earlier on a Web site for gay men. He sent Twitter and text messages urging others to watch when Mr. Clementi invited the man again two nights later, then deleted messages after Mr. 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 “net flow” 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 Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi were thinking.
Had Mr. Ravi set up the webcam because he had a pretty good idea that he would see Mr. Clementi in an intimate moment? Had he targeted Mr. Clementi and the man he was with because they were gay? And had Mr. Clementi been in fear?
Without Mr. Clementi to speak for himself, that last question was perhaps the most difficult to determine, and jurors struggled with it.
“That was the hardest because you really can’t get into someone’s head,” said one, [...]
But the defense’s insistence that Mr. Ravi had set up the webcam because he was afraid Mr. Clementi’s visitor would steal something, he said, rang hollow.
“If I knew someone was going to steal something from me, I would definitely take it with me,” Mr. Leverett said, adding, “Just from the fact of the second incident, it seemed that it was intentional.”
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 13 hours over 3 days after 13 days of testimony.
Reflecting the difficulty of defining hate crimes, it had taken the judge more than an hour simply to instruct the jury on the questions they had to answer to reach a verdict.
The jury concluded that Mr. Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated the men when he watched the first time, on Sept. 19, 2010.
But it found him guilty of the charge because Mr. Clementi “reasonably believed” he had been made a target because he was gay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/n...inced-them-of-dharun-ravis-guilt.html?_r=1&hp
Rutgers Case Jurors Say Digital Evidence Crucial
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER and BETH KORMANIK
Published: March 16, 2012
Dharun Ravi was not accused of causing the death of Tyler Clementi, his Rutgers University roommate who jumped off a bridge after Mr. Ravi used a webcam to spy on him kissing a man in their dorm and then talked about it on Twitter.
Related
But for members of the jury, some of the most convincing evidence of Mr. Ravi’s guilt came from Mr. Clementi’s own complaints and online behavior after he learned of Mr. Ravi’s spying. And Mr. Clementi’s words echoed even more powerfully because he was not available to repeat them.
“It was pretty hard to think about Tyler, because he wasn’t present to give his thoughts,” said Kashad Leverett, 20, of South Amboy, N.J., after he and 11 other jurors delivered a guilty verdict on all charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, on Friday. “But in the evidence that was provided, it showed that he believed he was being intimidated because of his sexual orientation.”
It was a case with a pixelated paper trail seemingly like no other: Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, text messages, e-mails and other online chatter that together added up to a mountain of proof of Mr. Ravi’s guilt, some jurors said.
“Given the overwhelming amount of evidence, it’s awfully difficult to single out any one thing as the most damaging,” said Susan Matiejunas, 74, a retired state worker from Monroe Township.
Over two days of deliberations, jurors said the only count on which they agreed from the outset was the first, that of invading Mr. Clementi’s privacy the first time Mr. Ravi used his webcam to spy on him. “I would classify us as a tight jury,” said Lynn Audet, 45, a schoolteacher from Perth Amboy. “We all respected each other’s opinions, and we all had a turn to talk.”
Other charges were hotly debated but led fairly quickly to votes to convict on other charges, including evidence tampering and witness tampering, Ms. Audet said. “There were text messages missing from his phone but not missing from other persons’ phones,” she said.
The texts from Mr. Ravi to a prosecution witness, Molly Wei, while she was being questioned by the police were “what convinced me of tampering with a witness,” Ms. Audet said. Mr. Ravi was in Ms. Wei’s room when he turned on his webcam and briefly spied on Mr. Clementi.
The bias intimidation charges were the most difficult to agree upon, jurors said. And what tipped the scales there, they said, was that Mr. Ravi had discussed spying on Mr. Clementi not just once, but repeatedly, even inviting his online friends to watch Mr. Clementi and the other man in a second encounter.
That, said Ms. Audet, is what elevated the case from one of teenagers behaving cruelly and insensitively to a crime.
“To attempt a second time, is what changed my mind,” she said. “A reasonable person would have closed it and ended it there, not tweeted about it.”
The webcam did not work for the second encounter; Mr. Ravi, 20, claimed that he had turned it off. But Ms. Audet said evidence suggested that he was lying. “He was at ultimate Frisbee practice,” she said, and evidence showed he then went to a dining hall. “We came to the conclusion that it was Tyler who turned off the computer to make sure he wasn’t filmed a second time.”
She added, “That hit home big.”
[...]
Mr. Ravi’s lawyer pointed to apologetic texts that Mr. Ravi sent Mr. Clementi, in which he said he had no problem with homosexuality and even had a close friend who was gay. (At almost the exact moment he sent the apology, Mr. Clementi, 18, committed suicide after posting on Facebook, “jumping off the gw bridge sorry”).
Mr. Leverett, a student and Twitter user himself, was unmoved. “I can’t speak for everyone on the jury, but me, personally, I believe it was something where he realized what he did was wrong, and it was just too late to amend for what he did.”
Of the apology, Ms. Audet said: “My first impression was to believe what he said. Then, as we started reading stuff, we found things in there that I interpreted more as covering.
“The friend he claimed was a good friend in high school, that person was never presented as a defense witness. If that person had come forward and said, ‘Hey, we’ve been good friends, and he knows I’m gay and he doesn’t have a problem with it,’ that might have swayed me in the other direction.”
[...]
“Unfortunately, Dharun, he’s learning the lesson a very hard way.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
