As time passes on the Rutgers bullying case, there is growing concern that justice was not served.
The best summary of the facts leading up to Clementi's suicide is from Ian Parker in the New Yorker. The article was so good that I read it twice. Parker explains that much of the discussion about the case is untrue. Clementi's mom wasn't cool about his homosexuality and may have caused him more hurt than his roommate. He may have been contemplating suicide before he went to Rutgers. Ravi never saw him having sex, just making out, with another guy. The video of the two guys kissing was never put on the Internet. Clementi was no angel; he made rude comments about Indians. There was no evidence that Clementi was extremely hurt by his roommates actions. Parker questions whether criminal charges were overstated in order to punish a moral crime.
There is lots of grey in this story that never made it to the popular media.
From danah boyd,
As someone who wants to rid the world of homophobia, this conviction leaves me devastated. I recognize the symbolic move that this is supposed to make. This is supposed to signal that homophobia will not be tolerated. But Ravi wasn’t convicted of being homophobic, but, rather, creating the “circumstances” in which Clementi would probably feel intimidated. In other words, Ravi is being punished for living in a culture of homophobia even though there’s little evidence to suggest that he perpetuated it intentionally. As Mary Gray has argued, we are all to blame for the culture of homophobia that has resulted in this tragedy.
I can’t help but think of Clementi’s parents in light of this. By all accounts, their reaction to their son’s confession that he was gay did more to intimidate Clementi based on his sexuality than Ravi’s stupid act. Yet, I can’t even begin to imagine that the court would charge, let alone convict, Clementi’s distraught parents of a hate crime. ::shudder::
I can’t justify Ravi’s decision to invade his roommate’s privacy, especially not at a moment in which he would be extremely vulnerable. I also cannot justify Ravi’s decision to mess with evidence, even though I suspect he did so out of fear. But I also don’t think that either of these actions deserve 10 years of jail time or deportation (two of the options given to the judge). I don’t think that’s justice.
This case is being hailed for its symbolism, but what is the message that it conveys? It says that a brown kid who never intended to hurt anyone because of their sexuality will do jail time, while politicians and pundits who espouse hatred on TV and radio and in stump speeches continue to be celebrated. It says that a teen who invades the privacy of his peer will be condemned, even while companies and media moguls continue to profit off of more invasive invasions.
(Thanks to Laura GM for the link.)
Richard Kim from the Nation writes,
There are all too many cases of gay teenagers whose lives have been made intolerably miserable and who are driven to suicide by the harassment and violence of parents, family, fellow students, teachers and other authority figures. This is not transparently one of them. And the trial and verdict to one side, there is another kind of injustice done when a life is crudely forced into becoming a symbol of social wrongs, when it is made to carry the burden of a composite reality—anti-gay hate crimes—to which it bears but a schematic and hasty relation.
We'll never know exactly why Clementi committed suicide. He seems like a very sweet boy, and his parents, who live only a mile away from me, must be consumed with horrible grief. I do think that wrongs were done to this boy, but maybe the worst wrongs didn't come from his roommate. It came from an overall culture that hates gay people; his own family was not immune to that. It also came from a college campus that throws young people into adulthood without the guidance that they need.
When I was starting off as a reporter for my college newspaper, my first assignment was to write up the police blotter section. It was a lot of fun. I would go down to the campus security building, go over the arrest records, and ask questions of the security chief. I could write about anything – people getting busted for drug dealing, public intoxication, fraternity pranks – except I wasn't allowed to write about the suicides. It happened often enough at our school. We were in the suicide zone of colleges in upstate New York, where there isn't enough sun light.
I think we turned a very complicated story into a neat and tidy story with a good guy and a bad guy.
Apt. 11d 
Obviously, the situation is very complicated, but really to understand it, you have to read it alongside this completely unrelated NYT story from last week: “Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System.”
Essentially, the criminal justice system is set up so that no one who thinks there is any chance of conviction would ever go to trial, because the potential penalties are so huge. So, everyone plea bargains. And the system goes on with everyone taking a suspended sentence and probation instead of risking 10 years in jail.
Except that in some cases — upper class college students who want to defend their rights, immigrants who risk being deported — they don’t accept the plea bargain. And then there is a trial, and a conviction where the extreme penalty has to be enforced to keep up the reality of the danger that leads 99% of the people to plea bargain.
So, I probably agree with the intuition that in this case, maybe 6 months is the proper jail time. But if the penalty is only 6 months, then suddenly no one takes the plea bargain, and everyone goes to trial, and the whole system falls apart.
Which is to say, yes, there is a huge problem with the verdict here, but just like you can’t fix homophobia by looking at one guy, you can’t fix the criminal justice system by looking at this one case.
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That’s an absurdly exaggerated view of the criminal justice system as it is in most of the country. I’m sure that New Jersey is worse than average on such things, but a great number of people go to trial on criminal charges. I know people who make their living one way or another from this. It isn’t just the personality of the defendants and the relative penalties that drives the decision. When the evidence is subject to different interpretations, as seems to be the case here, is when more people will chance a trial.
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I’m sure that New Jersey is worse than average on such things, but a great number of people go to trial on criminal charges.
Jury trials were 0.6% of all case dispositions in federal cases.
States don’t all publish the same information, but in 2009 in Texas, it was also 0.7% of criminal cases went to a jury trial. I doubt you’ll find any that climb much above 1%. “A great number” and “a miniscule percentage” can often refer to the same thing.
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That 1% statistic implies that a criminal case can result in a jury trial or plea bargain, thus ignoring dropped charges, bench trials, and unbargained guilty pleas (the last is rare, I assume, but it has always happened). I’m also not sure if it is limited to felony charges since I can’t find your source.
But, asserting that who will take a plea depends mostly upon the demographic characteristics of the defendant is absurd. It ignores the fact that most people who get arrested are really obviously guilty as in “we found them outside Wal-Mart with the ham in their pants.” The plea/trial decision isn’t just something that upper class kids take. It depends on how strong the case is in the opinion of the defense attorney or the client. When you get contested fact patterns, the decision of whether to take a plea or not is driven by how likely conviction is.
Your other argument (“no one who thinks there is any chance of conviction would ever go to trial”) gets at this point, but is again absurdly simplistic. The defense attorney should be looking at the relative severity of the plea sentence to the sentence if convicted at trial in light of the estimated odds of conviction, but that is a much more complex. It is also a two-way street. The prosecutor is looking at the same evidence and offering better pleas when the evidence is weaker.
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Anyway, I’m not asserting that the criminal justice system isn’t without problems and that many of those problems aren’t related to plea bargaining. It is just absurd to discuss it without reference to the strength of the evidence.
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The defense attorney should be looking at the relative severity of the plea sentence to the sentence if convicted at trial in light of the estimated odds of conviction, but that is a much more complex. It is also a two-way street. The prosecutor is looking at the same evidence and offering better pleas when the evidence is weaker.
Yes, and the brilliant defense attorney weighing the evidence will make a different recommendation depending on whether the person with a 5% chance of conviction will be getting 6 months in jail or a life sentence.
In Bordenkircher v. Hayes, Hayes was accursed of forging a check for $88. He was charged with forging a check, and offered a five year plea bargain (maximum sentence if convicted 10 years). He was told that if he did not accept it, the prosecutor would add another charge that included mandatory life imprisonment. He refused the plea bargain, and was eventually convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
This is what happens to people who refuse plea bargains.
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“He refused the plea bargain, and was eventually convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.”
So, what was the other charge?
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A case that so noteworthy that 35 years after the fact google autocomplete put in ‘v. hayes’ after I typed Bordenkircher. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying the primary focus isn’t deterrence (i.e. a unilaterally delivered massive punishment for disobedience) but rather a two-sided game in which there is actual bargaining (i.e. the relative positions of both sides matter).
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So, what was the other charge?
It was his third felony and there was a kind of Three Strikes law.
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And, as I understand it, the actual charges concern destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. That’s always going to be serious stuff, since if it’s successful it makes the rest of criminal justice impossible.
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“A case that so noteworthy that 35 years after the fact google autocomplete put in ‘v. hayes’ after I typed Bordenkircher”
Wikipedia wasn’t very helpful (at least not where I was looking). I didn’t want to jump into the law sites.
“It was his third felony and there was a kind of Three Strikes law.”
He should have taken the plea bargain, if he had a criminal record already and that’s what the stakes were. That was a dumb risk to take.
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Yes. The prosecutor did exactly as Ragtime said and deliberately threatened him and then punished him for non-compliance and the Supreme Court said that was O.K.
I’m not saying that doesn’t happen like that at times.
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I’m just finishing up Kingdom, a recent British TV series with Stephen Fry as a provincial solicitor. His client is a merciless but adulterous judge whose personal life has just caught up with him. The judge asks Fry’s sister Beatrice to give him a break.
Beatrice: What do you usually tell people who ask you for a second chance?
Judge: Usually 3 to 5 years.
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When I was starting off as a reporter for my college newspaper, my first assignment was to write up the police blotter section.
My first assignment was to report on the meetings of the Residence Hall Association. I think that’s why I only lasted a bit over a semester.
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wow… you weren’t allowed to write about the suicides. Was the campus community told about them at least or were they hushed?
One summer at UMass a grad student committed suicide in the dorm and wasn’t found until over a week later when it was smelling bad. The RA was my friend and she was absolutely traumatized by the police investigation (they wanted her to go in the room, etc, I don’t remember if she had to go, maybe yes). She had to be in therapy for a while after that. Sigh…
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I do agree that this case is more complicated than it might have first appeared. However, the big piece of it (for me personally) is the witness tampering/destruction of evidence issues.
Those are big deals. And I think those two charges, combined with Mr. Ravi’s clearly BS excuse that he was “trying to protect his iPad” when he set the camera up to turn on remotely probably had more to do with the jury’s ultimate decision than many people are willing to acknowledge.
When you show your character to be untrustworthy (lying, asking others to lie and attempting to destroy incriminating evidence) – people are less likely to believe these things were done innocently or out of fear of anything other than rigorous prosecution of your clearly illegal behavior.
And then you get into the fact that Mr. Ravi waived his right to a lawyer when he went to speak with the police. Foolis, foolish, foolish. He would have been much better off protecting his 5th amendment rights. In fact, reading about this case made me find that fantastic youtube video about NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE. It is a fascinating video ad should be a must watch for every citizen and non citizen in the US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
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NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE
If you have anything to hide, that’s a really good idea. Right up there with “Don’t drive if your lips feel numb.”
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I lean toward the position that if a guy goes to unusual lengths to watch two other guys make out, it may be because he enjoys watching guys make out.
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Applying a similar rule to people who go see Adam Sandler movies suggests horrible things about human nature.
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http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/30730932/detail.html
What do you think? 10 years? Or only if one of the pair recorded commits suicide?
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Here, there’s an actual recording and there was actual sex, so it’s arguably a bigger offense than Ravi’s. It’s still not worth 10 years hard time, though.
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