Man convicted of NJ webcam gay spying apologizes

In this photo from May 21, Dharun Ravi sits in court dur­ing his sen­tenc­ing in New Brunswick, N.J. Ravi, a for­mer Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity stu­dent con­victed of using a web­cam to spy on his male room­mate kiss­ing another man days before the room­mate killed him­self, pub­licly apol­o­gized on Tues­day for the first time. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Mel Evans)

GEOFF MULVIHILL

Asso­ci­ated Press

TRENTON, N.J. — A for­mer Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity stu­dent openly apol­o­gized for the first time on Tues­day for using a web­cam to spy on a roman­tic liai­son between a man and a room­mate who later killed him­self, say­ing he regrets his “thought­less, insen­si­tive, imma­ture, stu­pid and child­ish choices.”

Dharun Ravi, who had been crit­i­cized by a judge for not show­ing remorse and for refus­ing to say he was sorry, also said he will begin serv­ing a 30-day jail term on Thurs­day even though he doesn’t have to.

Through a lawyer, Ravi issued his most con­trite pub­lic state­ment yet in a case that made him a sym­bol of what his fam­ily called an overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tion and that made his room­mate, Tyler Clementi, a prime exam­ple of what gay rights advo­cates said were the con­se­quences of bullying.

“I accept respon­si­bil­ity for and regret my thought­less, insen­si­tive, imma­ture, stu­pid and child­ish choices that I made on Sept. 19, 2010, and Sept. 21, 2010,” Ravi said in his state­ment. “My behav­ior and actions, which at no time were moti­vated by hate, big­otry, prej­u­dice or desire to hurt, humil­i­ate or embar­rass any­one, were nonethe­less the wrong choices and deci­sions. I apol­o­gize to every­one affected by those choices.”

After spend­ing two days repeat­edly look­ing at the Twit­ter feed on which Ravi announced “I saw him mak­ing out with a dude. Yay,” Clementi, a shy, tal­ented vio­lin­ist, threw him­self from New York City’s George Wash­ing­ton Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010.

In March, a jury con­victed Ravi of all 15 crim­i­nal counts with which he was charged, includ­ing inva­sion of pri­vacy and bias intim­i­da­tion. On two of the intim­i­da­tion counts, he faced up to 10 years in state prison.

Last week, a judge sen­tenced him to 30 days in jail. Because the sen­tence is less than a year, it decreases the chances that fed­eral immi­gra­tion author­i­ties will seek to have Ravi deported to India, where he was born and remains a citizen.

Pros­e­cu­tors, find­ing the sen­tence too lenient, said they would appeal.

Ravi’s lawyers have said they expect to appeal the con­vic­tions entirely. They say that he was not hate­ful and that author­i­ties charged him with such seri­ous crimes because of Clementi’s sui­cide even though he was not charged with the 18-year-old’s death.

Ravi, 20, could have remained free dur­ing the appeal but instead is vol­un­teer­ing to head to the Mid­dle­sex County Jail in New Brunswick.

“It’s the only way I can go on with my life,” he said in the statement.

The apol­ogy comes as a sharp rever­sal in course for Ravi, whose story inspired hun­dreds of peo­ple to rally at New Jersey’s State House call­ing for no prison time and changes in the state’s hate crime laws.

When Ravi was sen­tenced, Judge Glenn Berman chas­tised him for not apol­o­giz­ing for his actions.

“I heard this jury say ‘guilty’ 288 times,” the judge said, refer­ring to all the sub-parts of the charges Ravi faced repeated 12 times, once for each juror. “And I haven’t heard you apol­o­gize once.”

Dur­ing the court pro­ceed­ing, Ravi, who had said in March in a news­pa­per inter­view that he was “very sorry about Tyler,” chose not to address the judge, though he cried as his mother pleaded for mercy for him.

He told Newark’s The Star-Ledger news­pa­per in an inter­view con­ducted before the sen­tenc­ing but pub­lished after­ward that he did not want to say he was sorry dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing because he thought it would sound insincere.

Dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing, Clementi’s brother James Clementi said that hear­ing an apol­ogy that late from Ravi would not be mean­ing­ful to him.

On Tues­day, the state’s largest gay rights group, Gar­den State Equal­ity, said it was happy Ravi had pub­licly apol­o­gized. But Chair­man Steven Gold­stein said the group was ques­tion­ing the tim­ing of the apology.

“We have mixed emo­tions, and so rather than take an orga­ni­za­tional stance just yet, we have posited the ques­tion to our mem­bers on (the group’s) Face­book page to ask what they think,” Gold­stein said.

Gar­den State Equal­ity has said Ravi deserves more jail time than he received but “nowhere near” the max­i­mum sen­tence he could have received.

“We have said that our hearts would be open to an apol­ogy had Ravi opened his heart up to us all,” Gold­stein said. “He could have apol­o­gized in a way that would not have com­pro­mised his legal posi­tion. But he came across to many of us as unre­morse­ful both before the trial and in engi­neered media appear­ances after the verdict.”

Posted by AP News on May 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.