Season 5, Episode 1
Dharun Ravi – Invasion of Privacy and Bias Intimidation of Suicide Victim, Tyler Clementi
first released February 1, 2022
Click the thumbnail to view the video
Dharun Ravi set up a webcam in the dorm room he shared with Tyler Clementi and secretly viewed a private romantic encounter between Clementi and another man, identified as MB.
On the evening of September 19, 2010, Ravi set up his webcam setup angled towards the bed of his roommate, Clementi, and accessed the webcam from the computer of another student, Molly Wei. Ravi and Wei viewed Clementi’s liaison, observing Clementi and his guest.
Following the viewing Ravi tweeted about the encounter to his 150 followers. Clementi saw Ravi’s tweets the next day, including one that read “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay”.
Clementi later filled out an online form requesting a room change, reporting that his roommate had spied on him with a webcam, and talked to resident advisor about it.
Ravi planned to film a second encounter and made tweets advertising his plans. However, despite these plans, the second viewing never went ahead. Clementi died by suicide on September 22, 2010. That night, he went to the George Washington Bridge and at 8:42 p.m. posted the status update on Facebook “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
Certain documents found on Clementi’s computer, including a suicide note, were not turned over to the defense because Ravi was not charged with causing Clementi’s death.
In this 2012 trial, Ravi was convicted on 15 counts of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and evidence tampering.
On May 21, 2012, Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail, 3 years' probation, 300 hours of community service, a $10,000 fine, and counseling on cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles.
In September 2016, A three-judge panel overturned the convictions because of a change in state law made after Ravi was convicted. The change concerned the bias intimidation law, which the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.
Although the appeals court overturned Ravi’s conviction, the judges were critical of what he’d done. The judges wrote that: The social environment that transformed a private act of sexual intimacy into a grotesque voyeuristic spectacle must be unequivocally condemned in the strongest possible way. The fact that this occurred in a university dormitory, housing first-year college students, only exacerbates our collective sense of disbelief and disorientation. All of the young men and women who had any association with this tragedy must pause to reflect and assess whether this experience has cast an indelible moral shadow on their character.
The interrogation of Dharun Ravi is available to view on Court in the Act. Click on this thumbnail:
Subtitles available in 14 languages: English (US), الترجمة العربية متوفرة, 提供中文字幕, Sous-titres français disponibles, Deutsche Untertitel vorhanden, हिंदी उपशीर्षक उपलब्ध, tersedia subtitle Indonesia, Sottotitoli in Italiano disponibili, 日本語字幕あり, 한글자막 가능, Legendas em Português disponíveis, Доступны русские субтитры, subtítulos en Español disponibles, Svenska undertexter tillgängliga.
Related keywords: True Crime, LGBT, Holly Street, Max Street
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