Staff report
Plainsboro resident and former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi, after being convicted of spying on and intimidating his college roommate who later committed suicide, now faces possible prison time of 10 years and possible deportation to India.
Mr. Ravi was convicted of all 15 counts against him, including invasion of privacy and attempted invasion of privacy on March 16.
On Monday afternoon, Steven Altman’s office Mr. Ravi’s attorney said there will be a motion for a new trial and if that is denied an appeal will be filed with the Superior Court Appellate Division. These actions will be taken at the time of sentencing on May 21.
The most serious charges in the conviction were three counts of bias intimidation, which falls under the hate crime statute. These are a mix of second- and third-degree offenses.
Third- and fourth-degree charges include: hindering prosecution, tampering with evidence and witness tampering. The evidence tampering includes deleting his texts and Twitter tweets; witness tampering includes trying to influence Molly Wei, a West Windsor resident and friend while she was talking to police about what she saw on the webcam used to spy on Tyler Clementi and another man being intimate with each other.
The defense presented a case that portrayed Mr. Ravi as a teen who simply made a mistake by using the webcam to view his roommate kissing another man.
Prosecutors said Mr. Ravi set up the webcam in September 2010 to spy on Mr. Clementi, tweeted about it and tried to catch Mr. Clementi with the man again two days later. A half-dozen students were believed to have seen the live video of the kissing, including Ms Wei.
Ms. Wei, who watched “a few seconds” of the first romantic encounter, took the stand in the early days of the trial. She accepted a plea bargain from prosecutors in return for her testimony.
Mr. Ravi could get up to 10 years in prison and could be deported to India after a trial that drew national attention because Mr. Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
New Jersey established some of the strictest school anti-bullying laws in part because of the death of Mr. Clementi.

