By Staff Report
The trial of Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, who is charged with invasion of privacy after the death of his roommate, who committed suicide after Mr. Ravi caught him being intimate with another man with a hidden web cam, has gotten underway in New Brunswick.
Mr. Ravi allegedly watched Tyler Clementi and the other man from the dorm room of friend and fellow West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North Class of 2010 graduate Molly Wei.
Ms. Wei, a West Windsor resident who was given a plea deal to testify against Mr. Ravi, took the stand in the second day of testimony in the trial in front of a packed courtroom.
On Feb. 27, Ms. Wei testified she saw a short video of Mr. Clementi standing in his room kissing another man via a computer in her room.
”We were shocked,” she said. “We initially said we couldn’t tell anyone,” admitting they had seen something they shouldn’t have.
Upon further questioning from Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Schellhorn, Ms. Wei said Mr. Ravi later made comments to friends via instant messenger and Twitter about his roommate and what he had witnessed.
She said she later showed the web cam feed to another friend who requested to see what happened, but this time Mr. Clementi and his guest had their shirts off.
”As soon as they saw it I turned it off,” she said.
The jury also got to read text messages between Ms. Wei and Mr. Ravi from several days later, where Mr. Ravi said Mr. Clementi had requested to have the room to himself again. One of the messages read “it’s happening again,” which Ms. Wei understood to be another sexual encounter.
As Ms. Wei was being questioned by Rutgers police during an investigation, Ms. Wei said Mr. Ravi was asking her via text message what she had told the officers and that Mr. Ravi might have wanted to make the police believe the spying was an accident and they were “just messing around” with the web cam Mr. Ravi set up in his and Mr. Clementi’s room.
Police took photos of the text messages between Ms. Wei and Mr. Ravi from Ms. Wei’s iPhone; these images were shown to the jury on Monday afternoon during Ms. Wei’s testimony.
As police were questioning her in 2010, Ms. Wei said she was confused by their questions.
”I was confused by what was going on in general because the police asked me a lot of questions, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know where Dharun was or where Tyler was,” she testified.
She said she thought rumors had gotten started and that was why police were questioning her and she said she gave police her computer.
Ms. Wei said she had known Mr. Ravi, who had the dorm room across the hall from hers, since middle school and they rekindled their friendship at Rutgers.
”The sense I got was they didn’t have much in common, Tyler was quiet,” she said during cross- examination when asked what she and Mr. Ravi had talked about when discussing their roommates. “I didn’t get the sense he didn’t like Tyler, just that they were different.”
Ms. Wei said Mr. Ravi never said he didn’t like his roommate and didn’t make a big deal about Mr. Clementi being gay.
Under cross-examination, Ms. Wei said she didn’t think Mr. Clementi had any idea of what she and Mr. Ravi had seen on the web cam. Ms. Wei said she spoke to several friends about the “shocking and surprising” things she had seen on the web cam.
”It felt wrong; we didn’t expect to see that,” she said. “And now that we did, we shouldn’t let people know. I didn’t expect to see people in an intimate setting.”
She said this was her first experience seeing two men being sexual.
Ms. Wei testified that Mr. Ravi told her he felt “kicked out” of his room and concerned about his property being stolen while he was not in the room.
Testimony from Ms. Wei concluded at 4 p.m. on Feb. 27 and was scheduled to begin again at 9 a.m. on Feb. 28.
Middlesex County First Assistant Prosecutor Julia McClure began to set up the case against Mr. Ravi during opening arguments on Friday, Feb. 24, saying Mr. Ravi looked up Mr. Clementi on social networking sites and suspected his future roommate was gay.
”What he found by doing that research on the Internet about Tyler Clementi was troubling to him,” she said. “He found out that Tyler Clementi was probably homosexual.”
Mr. Clementi’s family were in the front row of the courtroom during the proceedings and Mr. Ravi was accompanied by his parents at the trial.
Friends of Mr. Ravi testified on Friday on his behalf, saying the teen was concerned about who was in his dorm room.
The assistant prosecutor outlined two key dates for jurors Sept. 19 and Sept. 21.
”Those events on the day of Sept. 19 (2010) give rise to the two counts of invasion of privacy against the defendant,” she said during her opening statement. “For the invasion of privacy of Tyler Clementi and a guest he had over that evening to Room 30 in Davidson Hall. Invasion of privacy that they expected that they had a reasonable expectation to have and that invasion encompassed viewing their private sexual activity in that room. Those counts of invasion of privacy on the 19th and those counts of attempted invasion on the 21st were motivated by the fact that Tyler and his guest, who was a male, were homosexual.”
On Tuesday, Sept. 21, Mr. Ravi attempted to invade Mr. Clementi’s privacy again with the web cam, said Ms. McClure.
During his opening statement, Mr. Ravi’s defense attorney painted the freshman’s actions as childish. Attorney Steve Altman said his client never intimidated anyone and did not have any issues with homosexuality and that everyone has done stupid things and made mistakes.
Eight men and eight women were selected for the jury, which includes four alternates, on Feb. 23. The proceedings are taking place in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman in New Brunswick.
Evidence from computers in their dorm room, other rooms, and cell phones will be presented to the jury.
William O’Brien, assistant director of residential life at Rutgers, testified that Mr. Clementi requested a room change on Sept. 21, 2010. His staff did not see the request until after Mr. Clementi went missing from campus. The jury got to see Mr. Clementi’s request, but the reason for the request that he was spied on with a web cam was blacked out after the judge ruled that it was not an official business record because it was filled out by Mr. Clementi, not a school official.
On Friday and Monday, jurors heard from several witnesses that stated they never heard Mr. Ravi speak against homosexuals or his roommate’s sexuality.
Although not charged with Mr. Clementi’s death, Mr. Ravi will face 15 criminal counts that include invasion of privacy and tampering with witnesses and evidence. He is also being charged with bias intimidation, which is under the hate crime statute and if found guilty in the first degree, can carry up to a 20-year prison sentence in New Jersey.
Mr. Clementi was an award- winning musician who played violin in several orchestras, and reportedly was not openly gay.
Mr. Ravi also allegedly tried to hide the web cam a second time so others could watch, but failed when Mr. Clementi pulled the plug on Mr. Ravi’s computer after learning about what happened through Mr. Ravi’s twitter messages.
Mr. Clementi subsequently committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010.
Mr. Ravi rejected a plea deal in December that would have kept him out of jail.
Ms. Wei was also charged with invasion of privacy. Unlike Mr. Ravi, she accepted a deal that allowed her to be placed in a probationary program, called “pretrial intervention.” Upon completion of this program, all charges against Ms. Wei will be dropped. The program lasts three years, she said in court.
