Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
bjbj"9"9 JEFFREY BROWN: A New Jersey courtroom drew nationwide attention today. The sentence
was handed down in a case involving a gay college student who killed himself after being
spied on by his roommate. JUDGE GLENN BERMAN, Middlesex County, N.J.: I heard this jury
say guilty 288 times, 24 questions, 12 jurors. That's the multiplication. And I haven't heard
you apologize once. JEFFREY BROWN: After delivering a stern lecture, Judge Glenn Berman gave Dharun
Ravi 30 days behind bars, plus three years of probation. The 20-year-old Ravi could have
gotten 10 years in prison for convictions on invasion of privacy, bias intimidation
and destroying evidence. In March, a jury found him guilty of using a webcam to record
his Rutgers roommate, Tyler Clementi, a *** encounter with another man, then posting about
it on Twitter. Days later, in September of 2010, Clementi killed himself by jumping off
New York's George Washington Bridge. Today, Clementi's mother addressed the court before
the sentence was handed out. JANE CLEMENTI, mother of Tyler Clementi: My question is,
why didn't his roommate just request a roommate change? Why was he so arrogant and so mean-spirited
and evil that he would humiliate and embarrass Tyler in front of new dorm mates, the very
people Tyler was trying to meet and become friends with? JEFFREY BROWN: Ravi wasn't charged
in Clementi's death, and before the trial, he turned down a plea bargain that would have
given him no jail time. His mother appealed today for leniency. SABITHA RAVI, mother of
Dharun Ravi: As a mother, I feel that Dharun has really suffered enough for the past two
years. The media's influence on this case is devastating. My 20-year-old son already
has too much burden on his shoulder to face for the rest of his life. JEFFREY BROWN: In
addition to the jail time, Ravi was ordered to pay $10,000 to a program helping victims
of bias crimes. He ll also have to perform 300 hours of community service. But the judge
recommended that he not be deported to his native India. Ravi is expected to appeal his
conviction and prosecutors announced late today they will appeal the sentencing decision.
A short time ago, I spoke with Kate Zernike, who was in the courtroom today reporting on
the case for The New York Times. Kate Zernike, welcome. So Dharun Ravi faced up to 10 years
in prison. Was this sentence a surprise for those in the courtroom? KATE ZERNIKE, The
New York Times: I think it was an enormous surprise. I think it was a surprise even to
the people who had argued for leniency on his behalf, partly because the judge went
on, you know, quite an extended tongue-lashing of Dharun Ravi before sentencing him, and
then almost sort of dropped into the middle of his conversation the fact that he was going
to get only 30 days in jail. JEFFREY BROWN: Did the judge give any hint or sense of why
he ended up with a lighter sentence or what the reasoning was? KATE ZERNIKE: Well, I think
the judge did nod to the fact that he believed the legislature passed -- The New Jersey state
legislature passed this law on bias intimidation and intended it to be attached to crimes such
as -- as crimes that were really violent, not crimes like invasion of privacy, which
is what Dharun Ravi was convicted of two months ago. Also, prosecutors noted that a corrections
officer, in doing the pre-sentencing interview with Dharun Ravi, had said that he was respectful
and that the -- the corrections officer didn't recommend jail time, recommended actually
against prison time. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, tell us a little bit more about what it was
like in the courtroom today, clearly some very moving statements from the mothers of
both of the two young men most closely involved in this. What was it like? KATE ZERNIKE: It
was incredibly emotional. Even reporters watching it were sobbing. I mean, you saw these two
mothers, both of them described actually -- both of them in their prepared statements had described
the first day dropping their children at college and how much promise they thought they had
and sort of what they expected for these two young men and how they hoped this relationship
between the two, which was very clearly cool from the beginning, they hoped it would evolve.
You know, Mrs. Clementi, Tyler Clementi's mother, talked about her son's enormous promise
and just the sheer pain of having to sit through -- sit through court testimony and hear just
sort of the agony of her son's final days. They also seemed very angry at the defense.
They felt that the defense had sort of tried to make this Tyler's fault, that he had shown
absolutely -- that Dharun Ravi had shown absolutely no remorse. In the one televised interview
he did after the verdict, Dharun Ravi said, I'm comforted by the fact that Tyler wasn't
really bothered by what I did. He sort of implied that Tyler had been unaffected by
this, that there was so much else going on in Tyler's life that what Dharun did, the
actual spying, hadn't affected him. JEFFREY BROWN: But then Dharun Ravi's mother also
spoke. And that was also emotional. KATE ZERNIKE: That was incredibly emotional. And I think
that was where -- all along in this verdict, people have been -- since the verdict -- people
have been saying one life has been lost. If we sentence Dharun Ravi, two lives will be
lost. And I think that was what she was really conveying was that he's dropped out of Rutgers
University. He's been sitting at home. He takes very little pleasure in anything but
talking to his little brother and being with the family dog. He's been taking courses online.
But he's lost 25 pounds. She really talked about how, as she said, he's sort of been
sentenced already. JEFFREY BROWN: Now, this case, of course, drew lots and lots of attention.
What kind of reaction have you been able to get, if any, from outside groups, particularly
gay advocates? KATE ZERNIKE: Well, certainly Garden State Equality, which is a statewide
group that's been pushing very hard for the anti-bullying law that was passed after Tyler's
suicide, they have said that this is, you know, just a slap on the wrist. They say that
even shoplifting defendants in this state get longer sentences than what Dharun Ravi
is getting. On the other hand, many gay rights advocates who said that they don't believe
that hate crimes charges are the best way to guard against bullying of gays said that
they actually think that this is a reflection of the backlash and that this reflects that
people felt really that the prosecutors had gone in too hard, that they really reached
too far in trying to bring charges against Mr. Ravi. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, you know, the
case really played into these two major debates out there, I guess. One is the one you were
just referring to, which is the laws against hate crimes, and then the whole issue around
teen suicide, particularly gay teen suicide. What s your sense of where that -- where those
stand now after all of this? What did this raise? KATE ZERNIKE: Well, I think we're going
to see a real examination even in New Jersey, if not in other states, of hate crimes statutes
and whether they should be -- whether they can be attached to crimes like bias intimidation
or whether they do have to be by definition violent crimes. And I think also people are
going to try to sort of take this crime and think about, you know, what gay rights advocates
have argued. Those who support leniency for Dharun Ravi, what they were saying is let's
talk about all the ways that Tyler Clementi was told that being gay was bad. It wasn't
just his roommate. It was churches. It was, you know, people in school, and that they
really -- I think there s going to be some effort to try to draw broader lessons from
this. JEFFREY BROWN: And in the meantime, Dharun Ravi's lawyers said they might appeal
the original verdict, and the prosecutors today said they definitely were going to go
ahead to appeal the sentencing, right? KATE ZERNIKE: Absolutely. Prosecutors appeared
very, very stunned, very angry about this verdict. They had planned a press conference
after the -- sorry -- after the sentencing. They had planned a press conference and canceled
it. They really put out just a brief statement saying that this is not -- this deviated from
sentencing guidelines and they will absolutely appeal. They have 10 days to appeal before
Dharun Ravi is expected to report to prison on -- sorry, to jail on May 31. JEFFREY BROWN:
All right, Kate Zernike of The New York Times, thanks so much. KATE ZERNIKE: Thanks, Jeff.
h1Mh h1Mh h1Mh h1Mh gd1Mh h1Mh h1Mh h1Mh h1Mh h1Mh gd1Mh gd1Mh urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
PlaceType urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags PlaceName urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
place urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags City urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
State urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags country-region JEFFREY BROWN: A New Jersey
courtroom drew nationwide attention today Normal Microsoft Office Word JEFFREY BROWN:
A New Jersey courtroom drew nationwide attention today Title Microsoft Office Word Document
MSWordDoc Word.Document.8