Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s largest LGBT organization, labeled today’s early release of convicted webcam spy Dharun Ravi a “travesty of justice.” Goldstein had advocated against “throwing the book at Dharun Ravi,” but, like the majority of New Jersey residents, felt Ravi’s sentence was too lenient. Ravi first made national news after it was learned his roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death after Ravi had secretly recorded Clementi’s private intimate encounter with a man in their Rutgers dorm room.
“Dharun Ravi’s walk out of jail after only 20 days is practically a Monopoly game’s ‘get out of jail free’ card – a travesty of justice,” Goldstein wrote on the Garden State Equality website today.
Had Ravi gotten two years’ jail time, or a year – or heck, even six months –any of those would have better reflected a balance of crime and punishment without vengeance for the sake of vengeance. Instead, 20 days in jail was a fleeting and repugnant non-lesson for a young man who passed up nearly every chance to show remorse.
Given our view that Ravi’s 20 days in jail were way too light a sentence, how do we feel about the U.S. government’s decision not to deport him? We have opposed deportation because it would have gone to the other extreme. We are uncomfortable with the government’s using citizenship or residency status as a weapon against someone who has spent almost his entire life in the United States.
But again, that does not take away from our bottom line: A mere 20 days in jail for Dharun Ravi, engineered by powerhouse lawyers and a publicity machine few others in his position could ever afford, is a travesty of justice. Our thoughts continue to be, and must be, with Tyler Clementi’s family.
Just one month ago, Goldstein wrote:
Dharun Ravi has been sentenced to 30 days in jail. We have been public in taking a position of balance: We opposed throwing the book at Dharun Ravi. We have spoken out against giving him the maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and against deporting him. That would have been vengeance beyond punishment and beyond sending a message to the rest of society.
But we have similarly rejected the other extreme that Ravi should have gotten no jail time at all, and today’s sentencing is closer to that extreme than the other. This was not merely a childhood prank gone awry. This was not a crime without bias.
Remember that Ravi had messaged his motivation in violating Tyler’s privacy: “I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.†Remember that before Tyler took his life, Ravi messaged a friend: “Keep the gays away.†And remember that because Ravi had tampered with evidence, his post-facto messages to Tyler that he, Ravi, had no problem with gay people understandably lost their credibility to the jury.
Dharun Ravi wasn’t convicted of a bias crime unfairly. Dharun Ravi was convicted of a bias crime because his own words broadcast anti-gay animus to Tyler Clementi and the world.
The L.A. Times adds:
The executive director of another organization, Campus Pride, which is a national nonprofit working to make colleges and campuses safer for LGBT students, issued a statement saying he was “deeply disappointed and remains conflicted over the punishment in this case.”
Shane Windmeyer said he hopes that schools nationwide have learned something from the tragic case: “Colleges and universities across the country need to take greater accountability for the safety of LGBT students and actively discourage the bystander behaviors that attributed to this tragedy.”