Conviction Overturned In Case Of Rutgers Student Whose Roommate Committed Suicide After Being Secretly Filmed

from the good-to-see dept

Four and a half years ago, we wrote about our serious concerns about the conviction of Dharun Ravi, a Rutgers student who surreptitiously filmed his roommate engaged in a sexual encounter. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, later killed himself, after finding out that he had been filmed. That part was a big story, and kicked off a variety of discussions, some of which were more reasonable than others. But as we noted back then, what was most troubling about the legal case and conviction of Ravi was that he was really being prosecuted for what Clementi did, rather than what Ravi did.

As we noted, Ravi filming Clementi was definitely creepy, immature and dumb. But criminal? If Ravi had just filmed Clementi and nothing happened, there never would have been a prosecution. Ravi was really being prosecuted because Clementi killed himself -- and that's problematic. As we've explained a few times, while there's an obvious emotional reaction to someone killing themselves, no one fully knows why they did it other than the individuals themselves. And, blaming others for mean things they may have done after someone commits suicide is a really dangerous place to go. It actually encourages suicide by letting people think that killing themselves will "punish" those who are tormenting them. But the biggest thing is that we shouldn't blame one person based on the actions of another.

It only took four and a half years, but Ravi's conviction has now been overturned by an appeals court. You can read the full opinion here.

After Ravi's conviction in 2012, the state Supreme Court in a separate case struck down part of the state's bias crime statute that focused on the victim's state of mind. According to that case, it is the defendant's state of mind and intent that is important, not the victim's.

The appellate court said the prosecution conceded in its oral arguments four of Ravi's bias convictions should "be void as a matter of law," and, accordingly, dismissed those charges with prejudice. The court also dismissed Ravi's conviction on hindering his own apprehension and tampering with witnesses.

Of course, this isn't over yet. The court ordered a new trial, claiming that the original one was biased -- and there's still a chance that prosecutors may appeal this ruling to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

As for the reasoning of the court, it pointed out that prosecutors basically focused on Clementi's actions, rather than the defendant's (Ravi's), and presented an unfair and biased picture to the jury:

After carefully reviewing the record developed at trial, it is clear that the evidence the State presented to prove the bias intimidation charges under N.J.S.A. 2C:16-1(a)(3) permeated the entire case against defendant, rendering any attempt to salvage the convictions under the remaining charges futile. The State used evidence revealing the victim's reserved demeanor and expressions of shame and humiliation as a counterweight to defendant's cavalier indifference and unabashed insensitivity to his roommate's right to privacy and dignity. The prosecutor aggressively pressed this point to the jury in her eloquent closing argument.

It is unreasonable to expect a rational juror to remain unaffected by this evidence. In light of the Court's ruling in Pomianek, admission of T.C.'s state of mind evidence constituted an error "of such a nature to have been clearly capable of producing an unjust result."

In other words, exactly as we've talked about for years: when you go after someone because someone else committed suicide, the emotional aspects of the case are likely to completely steamroll the legal issues. Thankfully, the court has finally recognized that, even if only four years too late.

None of that is to suggest that what Ravi did was right, or that Clementi's suicide wasn't tragic. Ravi did something really stupid and immature. But stupid and immature doesn't mean criminal. Hopefully the prosecutors just decide to cut their losses and drop the case altogether.

Filed Under: dharun ravi, privacy, suicide, tyler clementi

From Lori Drew To Dharun Ravi, Punishing People Based On Others' Suicides Is A Mistake

from the giving-the-wrong-message dept

A few years back, we covered the Lori Drew case, involving charges brought against a woman who stupidly set up a fake user account on MySpace to try to find out what was going on with a girl the woman's daughter had some issues with. The "fake account" was of a boy who the real 13-year-old girl became very friendly with. At some point, the "boy" turned on the girl, said some nasty things to her -- including "the world would be better off without" her -- and cut off communications. The girl committed suicide soon after. Lots and lots of people wanted Lori Drew brought up on charges for the girl's death. While we found Drew's actions to be incredibly immature and ridiculous, we were much more concerned with efforts to pin the suicide on her. Of course, the law wouldn't allow such a thing, so prosecutors trumped up some charges, involving a claim that she committed a felony by not following MySpace's terms of service. She was found guilty of a misdemeanor (not felony) charge -- which was then dropped by the judge, who wasn't comfortable with the ruling.

Of course, this did lead to a flurry of attempts to pass "cyberbullying" laws -- which try to make it a crime of some sort to be a jerk online. This is problematic for a variety of reasons, especially since it raises significant First Amendment issues, in part because "being a jerk" is extremely subjective. But the worst part is that much of what is considered to be "jerky" behavior is determined after the other party commits suicide. This is extremely problematic -- because whether or not your actions are seen as criminal depends almost entirely on how someone else reacts to them. If they shake off your actions, then you're fine. If they commit suicide, you get punished. Thus, the incentive then is actually for kids to seriously hurt themselves, if someone acts in a mean way towards them, as that increases the likelihood of the bully getting punished. That doesn't sound like a good incentive system.

I'm thinking about all of this after hearing about the guilty verdict against Dharun Ravi -- the Rutgers student who surreptitiously filmed his roommate engaged in a sexual encounter with another male. That roommate, Tyler Clementi, later killed himself, once he found out about it being filmed. Like the Lori Drew case, much of the prosecution focused on the dead teenager -- and you can understand why. It's a horrible (and horrifying) story. But, again, the reaction is much more based on the end results, rather than the initial action. No doubt, what Ravi did was despicable, but is it really criminal? Law professor Paul Butler has an excellent opinion piece explaining why this is an overreaction. He notes that Ravi was clearly immature and did an obnoxious thing in invading his roommate's privacy, but the desire to see him locked up (and apparently there's a good chance he'll be deported to India, despite not having lived there since he was 2 years old) is almost entirely because of Clementi's tragic death:

Let's be honest. A lot of people want a pound of flesh from Ravi because they blame him for Clementi's death. Tyler's reaction was tragic, and it was idiosyncratic.... No judge in the country would have allowed a homicide prosecution, because, legally speaking, Ravi did not cause the death, nor was it reasonably foreseeable. Of the millions of people who are bullied or who suffer invasions of privacy, few kill themselves.

[....]

For his stupidity, Ravi should be shamed by his fellow students and kicked out of his dorm, but he should not be sent to prison for years and then banished from the United States.

As Butler notes, the rush to the criminal justice system, and the focus on blaming Ravi, takes us away from a more reasonable place in thinking about how to deal with these things:

The problem with broad laws like New Jersey's is that they come too close to punishing people for what they think. Bigotry, including homophobia, is morally condemnable, but in a free country, it should not be a punishable offense....

[....]

Ravi did not invent homophobia, but he is being scapegoated for it. Bias against gay people is, sadly, embedded in American culture. Until last year people were being kicked out of the military because they were homosexuals. None of the four leading presidential candidates -- President Obama, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich -- thinks that gay people should be allowed to get married. A better way to honor the life of Clementi would be for everyone to get off their high horse about a 20-year-old kid and instead think about how we can promote civil rights in our own lives.

Though a national conversation about civility and respect would have been better, as usual for social problems, we looked to the criminal justice system. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world. We are an extraordinarily punitive people.

Indeed, as tragic as Clementi's death is, it did inspire thousands of people to act in a positive manner against homophobia by launching the It Gets Better project -- a very powerful way that tons of people have gathered to try to pass along the message to bullied teens (mainly from the LGBT community) that things do, in fact, get better. That response is a way of trying to deal with the actual problems. Going after Ravi with these charges just seems like a punitive action based on what Clementi did after Ravi's clearly childish and obnoxious actions. It certainly can be difficult to separate out what Ravi did from what Clementi did later, but in a society based on law, that's what we're supposed to do. Being a jerk should get you shunned, but not put in prison.

Filed Under: cyberbullying, dharun ravi, free speech, lori drew, suicide, tyler clementi