How Dharun Ravi Could Get 10 Years for Expressing Unapproved Views

Dharun Ravi is on trial in New Jersey for spying
on his college roommate. Although the Newark
Star-Ledger says "Ravi
is not charged in connection with [Tyler] Clementi's death," it is
doubtful that he would have been charged at all if Clementi had not
jumped off the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010. That
was three days after Ravi, monitoring their Rutgers University dorm
room via a webcam, watched Clementi kiss a male visitor and two
days after Ravi tweeted that he "saw my roommate making out with a
dude." If Clementi had not killed himself (for reasons that remain
unclear), Ravi surely would not be facing the prospect of 10 years
in prison for "bias intimidation."
But now that he is, his fate may hinge on his opinions about
homosexuality. "He's not homophobic," Ravi's attorney, Steven D.
Altman, insisted during his opening statement on Friday. "He's
not antigay." When the prosecution called four Rutgers students to
testify that "his roommate's sex life had been very much on
[Ravi's] mind and that the spying had relied on advance planning,"
The New York Times
reports, "Mr. Altman elicited from those same witnesses
testimony that Mr. Ravi had shown no hatred of gays or of Mr.
Clementi." It is safe to say that if Ravi had told his friends
"man, I hate queers," or had simply endorsed the biblical view of
homosexuality, those sentiments would have been used against him.
This is how "hate crime" statutes, which enhance penalties for
existing offenses based on bigoted motives, end up punishing people
for their beliefs.
Ravi (who, like Clementi, was an 18-year-old freshman at the
time) has claimed he activated the webcam on his computer that
night because he did not trust the older man visiting Clementi and
wanted to keep an eye on him. Altman emphasized that Ravi and a
friend, Molly Wei, caught just a few seconds of Clementi kissing
the other man. Ravi also said he was joking when he tweeted that he
planned to watch the two again two nights later. But even if we
discount Ravi's mitigating explanations, he is guilty, at worst, of
being an immature jerk?not the sort of thing people usually got to
prison for. Ravi's comments to friends suggest that if he was
picking on his roommate, it was probably because of Clementi's
social awkwardness rather than his sexual orientation. Is the
second motivation 10 years worse than the first? 
More on hate crime laws
here. For an in-depth discussion, see my 1992
Reason article "What's Hate Got to
Do With It?" (PDF).

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