Slashdot Mirror
Rutgers Student Ravi Convicted of Bias Intimidation and Spying
In 2010, Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi used his computer's webcam to spy on the activities of his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi, and commented about it publicly on Twitter. Days later, Clementi committed suicide. Ravi was indicted on 15 charges, going to trial last month. Now, reader doston sends word that the trial has ended, and Ravi has been found guilty on all 15 charges, though the jury returned a not guilty verdict on aspects of certain charges.
"After less than three full days of deliberations, the five men and seven women of the jury found Dharun Ravi, 20 years old, guilty of invading the privacy of his 18-year-old roommate, Tyler Clementi, and his dorm-room date. They also found that Ravi was motivated by bias under a New Jersey hate-crime law that had been largely untested so far. ... The jury had been asked to decide Ravi’s motivations when he trained his webcam on Clementi and his date on two separate occasions in September 2010, in a case that set off a national conversation about cyber-bullying and treatment of gay youth. ... Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison on most serious bias intimidation convictions, but is likely to receive a lesser sentence based on sentencing guidelines because he is a first time offender. The India-born Ravi, who has spent most of his life in the U.S. as a permanent resident, faces the possibility of deportation as a result of his criminal conviction. He rejected a plea deal in December that would have kept him out of prison and offered him assistance with immigration authorities."
That's pretty gay... err, I mean retarded... err, I mean lame, err...
It's damn unfortunate for everyone involved. But even worse, Ravi is also going to have his life ruined by a man who decided to end his own. What Ravi did was punch in the nose wrong - not 10 years in prison and deportation. Heck, the stupid stuff we did on our floor in college was just as bad or worse. I'm sure 99% of every man who went to college in the dorms can say the same.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I think what Ravi did was wrong, and had tragic consequences, but I have a problem with the term "hate crimes," and giving certain segments of society special protections over other segments of society. There should be other crimes that he could be charged with (invasion of privacy laws, etc.), but to charge someone having a particular belief system is wrong. I don't have a problem with considering intent when it comes to sentencing, but it seems entirely improper to consider it as a crime in and of itself.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Yeah, he definitely was guilty of invasion of privacy and most certainly was an asshole of extraordinary magnitude. But am I the only one kind of creeped out by the idea that something as vague as "bias intimidation" can get you ten years in prison? I mean, what the hell even *is* that?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
SmallFurryCreature, you're a right asshole. No one, not prisoners, not women, not anyone, deserves to be raped. People should not be placed into prison to be raped. If prison is not enough punishment, then punishment should be changed. But to expect, or in your evil case, demand that someone be raped in prison is wrong wrong wrong.
Ask yourself you conservative 'not a bleeding heart anymore' nutjob, what would Jesus have you do? Answer: Certainly not have a prisoner raped.
SmallFurryCreature, you should beg your creator for forgiveness and help for being more compassionate. Shame on you.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I think that the anon above may have wanted to link this story address rather than the response to the story which was linked above (though that was also interesting).
Thanks much at any rate for bringing our attention to the New Yorker; their writing is pretty well rounded, and the 14 page article is a bit longer than the other news treatments I've seen about the situation.
Firstly, he can be sentenced up to ten years. Sentencing hasn't occurred yet. In fact, the article notes the time spent will likely be less because of the nature of his background and lack of criminal history.
Also, he was offered a plea deal that included no prison time. By, rejecting this deal, he decided to take his case to the jury and accepted the chance of a harsher sentence if found guilty on the charges.
As for the motivated by bias factor that made him guilty of a hate crime, certainly, these laws are controversial and this case may lead to their re-examination.
But, it is the law of the state he was in, he was found guilty of violating it. If the jury thought he violated the law, then good for them for putting aside their personal objections to it and doing what is required of them.
If you don't like these kinds of laws, you lobby to change it. Via the courts or legislation. Maybe this case will be a basis for challenging the law in this state, for example.
All in all, this seems very simple. Don't spy on people. Don't violate their privacy. There are consequences for such actions, and those may be legal in nature.
If I have a choice, I don't want him in my country.
You know, this isn't just your country. If I had a choice, I would reject plenty of folks from my country. Your judgement about deportation being a punishment should be weighed on every crime.
This kid did something stupid and he might get deported to a country he didn't grow up in, and might not know at all. Other kids do stupid stuff like this all the time (even resulting in injury or death), and if they get punished at all, don't get sent to an effectively unknown country.. maybe they spend some time doing rehabilitation or restitution, or perhaps some incarceration (very unlikely 10 years).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I can see why it is on the news. But a Tech Site like Slashdot?
Even nerds have to worry about living in police state where you can be thrown in jail for ten years for
1. Thought crimes
2. Other people's actions (when they decide on their own to commit suicide)
3. Committing an offense that would be normally be consider not too serious but becomes serious when committed against special protected classes (I believe there are precedents for this in castes laws in India and in Celtic laws where punishments were based on the social status of the victim and the criminal).
Given that nerds often have thoughts outside the norm, often have trouble anticipating the behavior of more normal people, and often find ourselves at the bottom of social status, such a system is very troubling for us.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Please note that the State uses a plea bargain as a way to avoid the effort of actually going to trial. Not saying this guy wasn't guilty, but the fact is that only a tiny fraction of criminal cases actually wind up in front of a jury. Why? Because the State says "take this deal or we throw the book - and the chair and the desk and the whole goddamn building - at you". It's not even remotely fair; it is a blatant attempt to intimidate people out of their right to a trial by jury. Of course, the juries are generally not aware of this, and are almost certainly unaware of the deal initially offered.
"Bias intimidation" is even more idiotic that "hate crime". What kind of idiots are we electing as legislators? Oh, right...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
You'll notice the GP didn't say anything about a right not to be offended. He was talking about intimidation.
Hate crimes are not simply crimes where someone has said "I think gays are bad". Nobody has outlawed that. They're crimes where someone's said "I'm going to beat you up, or kill you, because you're gay."
This is about violence being used to, or with the effect of, intimidate a group of real people who have done nothing wrong. Sometimes motives matter. This is one of those cases. If it doesn't matter, if violence and killing is no worse if the intent is to intimidate a group of people, then convict Bin Laden for manslaughter and have him do community service.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I dislike the concept of hate crimes laws.
But I dislike a lot of things, and one thing that hanging around with gay and trans people has taught me is: We appear to need these laws, in that in their absence, people get away with a lot of crap.
Here's the thing. Someone said this was "punch in the nose" wrong behavior. Well, think of what happens if people decide that punching people like you in the nose is okay, or possibly morally obligatory. So it's not that some guy punches you in the nose once; it's that everywhere you go, about 10% of the time when you walk into a public place, someone punches you in the nose.
The cumulative effect is wildly different from what you'd expect if you just looked at the severity of a single offense and multiplied by the number of times it happens. It turns out that there is a big difference between "sometimes people are a jerk to you, it happens, you deal", and "people are systematically and consistently a jerk to you and anyone like you no matter what you personally have or haven't done."
I really don't see a problem with this outcome. You bully a lot of people, especially people that you know to already be subject to excessive harassment, and sometimes things go very wrong. Solution: Don't bully people, and especially don't bully people you know to be members of groups that are systematically bullied by lots of other people. If you do, you take the risk that the bullying will go horribly wrong and people will blame you for it. Possibly because, if you hadn't done it, that wouldn't have happened.
Basically, what the comments here do is illustrate, to me, why hate crime laws are a necessary thing; because the world is full of people who, never having been the subject of systematic harassment, are quick to dismiss it as no big deal and think it's funny when it happens to people they look down on. So we do need a way to clarify that, yes, this really is a big deal, and really is a problem. Congratulations! The reason we need hate crime laws is that a significant number people, some of them slashdot commenters, have not yet reached the level of empathic response to other peoples' circumstances that we would typically expect from an autistic teenager.
(... And I know, because I was an autistic teenager, and I was a little better than what I'm seeing here. Not much better, though.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
If you look at the actual breakdown of the charges Ravi was convicted of, you'll notice that he was acquitted of all the bias intimidation sub-charges that he knowingly intimidated Clementi. The one that he was convicted of, which caused the bias intimidation guilty verdict was that "under circumstances that caused Tyler Clementi to be intimidated, and considering the manner in which the offense was committed, Clementi reasonably believed that he was selected to be the target of the offense because of sexual orientation".
So basically he was convicted not because Ravi had any bias when committing the act, but but because Clementi believed that the act was committed out of bias.
That's a very scary verdict because it basically states that it doesn't matter whether or not you have any real bias when committing a crime. You can still be convicted of bias intimidation if the victim believes you are biased. In other words, it's not what you believe, it's what someone else things you believe.
With that precedent, you can use bias intimidation charges to charge and convict preachers for preaching against homosexuality in churches or comics for making "inappropriate" jokes in comedy houses.