A New Jersey jury on Friday convicted a former Rutgers University student of invasion of privacy and hate crimes for using a Webcam to spy on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, who was gay. The former student, Dharun Ravi, was convicted on all 15 counts against him, including those related to trying to cover his tracks in the 2010 incident.
The case drew national attention because Mr. Clementi, a fellow freshman, killed himself just days after Mr. Ravi spied on his sexual encounter with another man.
The trial, in New Brunswick, N.J., lasted almost two weeks. It focused on two incidents in which Mr. Ravi observed Mr. Clementi via a Webcam, or tried to. The jurors deliberated for more than two days. They found Mr. Ravi guilty, in the first incident, of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation based on sexual orientation, which falls under New Jersey’s hate-crime law. Mr. Ravi was not being purposefully intimidating that time, the jury said, but he knew that his conduct could cause Mr. Clementi to feel intimidated.
In the second incident, the jurors found Mr. Ravi guilty of both attempted invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, but this time, they said, the intimidation of Mr. Clementi was purposeful. On all charges of tampering with evidence and witnesses, the jury found Mr. Ravi guilty.
In New Jersey the charge of bias intimidation against a protected group can be attached to a charge for another crime, and a defendant is guilty whether he commits that crime “with a purpose to intimidate an individual or group” or merely knowing it would cause an individual or group to be intimidated. A defendant is also guilty if a victim was intimidated and “reasonably believed” the act was meant either to intimidate or to single him out because of a protected status. Those distinctions could make a difference in Mr. Ravi’s sentencing, which is expected to take place on May 21.
Mr. Ravi was also found guilty of invasion of privacy but not guilty of bias intimidation of Mr. Clementi’s romantic partner, known at the trial as “M.B.”
The prosecution’s decision to charge Mr. Ravi with bias-intimidation was controversial.
Bias-intimidation charges have their place, said Marc R. Poirier, a professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law, in Newark, N.J., but he thinks the Rutgers case was not a good fit for them.
“This is really stupid, mean things that college students do to each other,” Mr. Poirier said. What is more, he said, Mr. Ravi and Mr. Clementi could have resolved their own issues: “This whole thing could have been avoided if they would have talked to each other.” The two students almost never spoke face-to-face, according to a long account of the case in The New Yorker.
Mr. Clementi’s death was not supposed to be considered in the trial, Mr. Poirier said, but it inevitably was. “The media overreacted at the beginning, and then the whole thing was colored, and continues to be colored, by Clementi’s suicide,” he said, calling the verdict “what I was afraid of.”
That verdict, however, could have implications for future prosecutions involving other actions by young college students. Like the Virginia jury that convicted George Huguely V last month of second-degree murder in the death of his former girlfriend while both were students at the University of Virginia, the jury in the Rutgers case rejected defense efforts to portray the defendant’s actions as influenced or mitigated by campus culture.
“The debate in this case was, Was this a stupid college prank or criminal intimidation?” Suzanne B. Goldberg, a gender-law expert at Columbia Law School, told The New York Times. “The jury gave a clear answer.”
That answer, Ms. Goldberg said, challenges the notion that youthfulness provides a kind of immunity for online activities. “This reinforces that social media can cause great harm and that its misuse can be criminal.”
Campus Climate and Privacy
The case has raised a host of questions for colleges as well, and experts on technology, legal, and sexual-identity issues weighed in after the verdict with advice for campus leaders from various vantage points.
“There is a lesson to be learned for all colleges when it comes to making a safe learning space for all students,” said Shane L. Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. Colleges have not taken as much responsibility for protecting those students as they have for other groups, he said—a problem that stems partly from the fact that many colleges don’t identify and track that population.
Tracy Mitrano, director of information-technology policy and the Institute for Computer Policy and Law at Cornell University, saw the case as yet another reminder of colleges’ responsibility to advise students on the use of technology.
“We did not need this case to tell us how much education we must give to students on these complicated issues of creating a solid community using technology that moves faster than laws or social norms,” she said. But, she added, Mr. Ravi “will become an object lesson for all these issues” of how technology raises the stakes in students’ interactions.
Rutgers emphasized civility in a written statement on Friday after the verdict was reached. “Freedom of expression, tolerance, the right to personal privacy, and the open discussion of ideas are integral parts of any university community,” it said. “This sad incident should make us all pause to recognize the importance of civility and mutual respect in the way we live, work, and communicate with others.”