(CNN) -- A New Jersey judge on Monday sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail for spying on and intimidating his gay Rutgers University roommate, Tyler Clementi, who then killed himself by jumping off New York's George Washington Bridge in September 2010.
Ravi will serve three
years of probation and must complete community service aimed at
assisting victims of bias crimes, according to Superior Judge Glenn
Berman. He also must pay more than $11,000 in restitution.
However, Berman stayed the jail sentence for 10 days in case of an appeal at the request of defense attorneys.The September 2010 death
of Tyler Clementi, and Ravi's trial this year, thrust the issue of
cyber-bullying and prejudices against homosexuals into the national
spotlight.
Clementi, an 18-year-old
freshman, plunged to his death in the Hudson River after learning that
Ravi had secretly spied via a webcam as Clementi kissed another man."I haven't heard you
apologize once," Berman told Ravi, 20. He said Clementi "placed his
trust in you without any conditions, and you violated it."
Ravi, he said, acted out of "colossal insensitivity."Berman took factors including Ravi's youth and his lack of a criminal record into consideration.Ravi could have faced 10 years in prison and deportation to his native India.
In the months that
followed Clementi's death, President Barack Obama released a videotaped
message condemning bullying, while New Jersey legislators enacted
stricter laws to protect against it in schools.
Ravi's sentencing
hearing stretched to nearly four hours Monday and was punctuated by
emotional victim impact statements offered by Clementi's parents and
brother.
"My son Tyler was a kind
and gentle soul," Joe Clementi said of his son. "... Nobody other than
Tyler understood how vulnerable he was, but the fact is that he was very
vulnerable -- and he was shaken by the cold, criminal actions of his
roommate."
James Clementi recalled
his brother was excited about attending college. "He could never have
known the viper's nest he was walking into," he said. Family members blasted
Ravi for showing no remorse. "I have often found myself wondering if
Dharun Ravi is even capable of empathizing with another person," James
Clementi said.
Jane Clementi said that when her son died, "My world came crumbling apart."
A victim impact statement was also read on behalf of the man involved in the videotaped encounter, identified only as "M.B."I do not mind that Mr.
Ravi has never apologized to me for what he did and said, but I do
wonder if it ever has entered his mind that he has caused me a great
deal of pain and yet he knows nothing about me," the statement said.
Ravi's parents also addressed the court, although he chose not to speak.
"Not a single day goes
by we don't think about Tyler," said his father, Ravi Pazhani. But he
said his son had been demonized and "dragged through the mud.""How can a person who never acted as a bully ... go from a passive child to hardcore bully overnight?" he asked.
His mother, Sabitha
Ravi, cried as she related the stress and pain her son has experienced
since Clementi's death. "He has been living in hell for the past 20
months," she said. Listening to her
statement, Ravi grew tearful for the first time during the hearing.
After his mother finished speaking, the two embraced as she sobbed.Before the statements were offered, Berman denied defense motions for acquittal and requesting a new trial.Though Ravi and Molly
Wei -- a fellow student who admitted to joining Ravi to watch the
surreptitious encounter that others were alerted to via social media --
were charged in the wake of Clementi's suicide, they were not charged
directly with his death.
Facing two counts of
invasion of privacy, Wei reached a plea deal that required her to
testify against her friend and former high school classmate as well as
to complete a three-year program on cyber bullying and do 300 hours of
community service.Prior to sentencing
Ravi, Berman said he was planning to terminate Wei's program early,
noting that she testified candidly against Ravi although "it was clear
she didn't want to be here." He said she had completed 250 hours of
community service before her testimony.
Ravi, who was studying
on a visa at the New Jersey university at the time of the incident,
turned down a plea deal offered by Middlesex County prosecutors.Under the terms of that
offer, he would have avoided jail time in exchange for undergoing
counseling, doing 600 hours of community service and disposing of any
information that could identify the man who appeared in the Web video
with Clementi.
Prosecutors also offered to help Ravi avoid deportation, though they said they could not guarantee it.
That set the stage for
the trial, during which prosecutors argued that Ravi tried to embarrass
Clementi because he was gay and that his actions were motivated by a
desire to intimidate the Ridgewood, New Jersey, native expressly because
of his sexual orientation.
"These acts were
purposeful, they were intentional, and they were planned," prosecutor
Julia L. McClure told the jury on the first day of the trial. Ravi "was
bothered by Tyler Clementi's sexual orientation," she later said more
bluntly.
Ravi's attorneys
countered by saying that their client acted thoughtlessly, portraying
him as an immature college student who made a mistake, and that his
actions were not based on homophobia.
After more than three
weeks in court, a jury on March 16 convicted Ravi of invasion of
privacy, bias intimidation, witness tampering, hindering apprehension
and tampering with physical evidence.
Days after his
conviction, Ravi told ABC television's "20/20" that he thought Clementi
understood he "wasn't trying to intimidate him and scare him because he
was gay." He also criticized how the story of what happened was
portrayed.
"I felt like I was being
used by everybody," said Ravi, who did not testify on his own behalf.
"They were taking revenge on me, even though what they think happened
isn't what happened."
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