Dharun Ravi, a former Rutgers student, was sentenced to 30 days in jail on Monday for his role in his former roommate’s suicide. Tyler Clementi committed suicide after a video of him kissing another man was streamed online by Ravi. In March, Ravi was found guilty of hate crimes and invasion of privacy. Ravi did not speak during the sentencing on Monday morning and he will begin serving his sentence on May 31.
“The media was ripping him apart with their misleading facts … He was absolutely devastated and broken into pieces,” Sabitha Ravi, Dharun’s mother, pleaded.
“I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi,” Judge Glenn Berman said when announcing his sentencing decision. “He had no reason to. But, I do believe he acted out of colossal insensitivity.”
In relation to the case, Ravi was also convicted of witness tampering, bias intimidation and hindering arrest. Ravi used a webcam to view Clementi and his date in their room back in 2010. He then posted tweets about the encounter he saw on video. In the tweets, Ravi explained what he saw and invited his followers to watch as his roommate kissed another man.
Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge back on September 22, 2010. This occurred after Clementi posted the following on his Facebook page, “Jumping off the gw bridge. Sorry.”
The man in the video with Clementi, who has not been identified, issued the following statement via his attorney, Richard Pompelio. “While I bear no anger towards Mr. Ravi, after much thought and many sleepless nights, I must say that Mr. Ravi should serve some type of confinement so that he can reflect on the serious harm he has caused. I do not believe that he has taken responsibility for his conduct, and to this day he seems to blame me for the actions he took.”
Joseph Clementi, the father of Tyler, said of Ravi, “He had no call to do what he did. Tyler never did anything to Mr. Ravi to cause him harm.” Joseph described Ravi’s actions as a result of seeing his roommate “as someone not deserving basic human decency and respect. All because my son was different from him [and] because he was gay.”
Jane Clementi, Tyler’s mother, said that the actions of Ravi were “mean-spirited, they are evil and, most important, they are against the law.”
There was a plea deal offered to Ravi prior to the trial that if he accepted he would have been sentenced to probation and mandatory community service. If Ravi accepted the plea deal he would have been kept out of jail.