Does anyone else think it’s ironic when adults verbally beat each other up over a legal case about bullying? A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor to remind people that Dhuran Ravi’s family was also affected by the suicide of Tyler Clementi and to suggest that the charges might be too severe. I had hoped the original wave of public passion that influenced the legal case might be balanced by compassion for the other family involved once enough time had passed. The angry comments posted online and a letter to the editor in response, however, suggest that the currents are as turbulent as ever and that it’s easy to overlook our common desire to keep children safe from the pain of bullying.
Let me be specific so as not to be misunderstood. I believe our criminal justice system is reliable, and I expect the jury to be fair in the Ravi case. The charges involving violation of privacy, tampering with evidence, and witness tampering will be weighed according to the law and the facts. Ravi at least exercised poor judgment and at worst may be criminally accountable. The interesting legal question emerging from these particular charges is whether it is invasion of privacy to monitor one’s own bedroom. We’ll see what the jury thinks.
While all the charges may not have been influenced by public pressure, what about the bias crime charges? Attorneys are human, and, as the New York Times noted, there were “calls from many quarters for prosecutors to bring bias charges.” Bias intimidation laws, or hate crime laws, originated from anger about intensely evil acts, like the intentional dragging of a black man to his death and the torturing and tying of a gay man to a fence and leaving him to die. Some believe these laws protect vulnerable societal subgroups. Others believe hate crime laws institutionalize divisiveness. Regardless, the laws are on the books, and how they should be applied by prosecutors in cases of more common incivility or harassment is the problem at hand.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Assume the facts in the Ravi case remain the same, except Clementi was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt and is now fully recovered and waiting for the trial. Would a charge that could result in 10 years of prison for Ravi seem too harsh? Or assume that Clementi had simply gotten angry about the shabby treatment, was assigned a nicer roommate, and is now carefully preparing to testify. Still 10 years for Ravi? His actions and motivations would have been the same. But would all scenarios end in charges threatening 10 years of hard time? Though the prosecution has said it didn’t charge Ravi for the death of Clementi, it looks to me like the bias charge is a proxy for some form of manslaughter charge when there’s no legal basis for that level of prosecution.
We could analyze the case from other angles. What would have happened if Clementi had not been gay, if he had been in a different protected class, like a religious minority, or in no protected class at all? Do some subgroups influence prosecutorial discretion more than others? When does special protection begin to undermine equal protection? Will the harsh penalties for bias crimes attach to smaller and smaller infractions? When prosecutors included hate crime charges in their offer of a plea deal to Ravi, I believe there were many good reasons to turn it down beyond the facts in Ravi’s defense.
Adults won’t always agree about what punishment is appropriate in a criminal case. Even two parents in the same household don’t always agree on how to discipline their kids. Where one sees malice, another sees immaturity. But we work it out and we try not to yell, because the kids are watching.
Kathy Bybee
West Windsor
