Lawyers For Rutgers Student: "Molly Wei Is Innocent"

Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei

Last week, Rutgers freshmen Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei were charged with invasion of privacy after allegedly sharing video of Ravi's roommate, Tyler Clementi, engaged in a sexual encounter with another man. Though community activists have called for hate crime charges against the two, that is looking less likely, and now Molly Wei's lawyers say her reputation has been "unjustly tarnished" by the allegations. They said in a statement, "This is a tragic situation. But this tragedy has also unfairly led to rampant speculation and misinformation, which threaten to overwhelm the actual facts of the matter. Those true facts will reveal that Molly Wei is innocent. Molly committed no crime."

The story goes that on September 19th, Clementi asked Ravi to have their room to himself for the night. Ravi went to hang out with Wei, a friend from high school, and asked to use her computer to "see if anything unusual was taking place inside his room," according to a friend. Ravi allegedly opened his webcam, closed the video feed as soon as he saw what was going on, and then wrote about it on Twitter. He then allegedly wrote two days later, "Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes, it's happening again," suggesting he was planning to intentionally stream footage of Clementi with another man.

It is unclear if anyone other than Ravi and Wei saw the first live video feed. She and Ravi have been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy for allegedly watching the first live feed, and Ravi has been charged with two additional counts for allegedly planning to stream the video on a second occasion, suggesting Wei wasn't involved. They also face possible expulsion from Rutgers. Wei's lawyers said, "This classic rush to judgment ignores Molly’s basic right to fairness and presumption of innocence. We can only hope, for everyone’s sake, that the truth will not be forever lost in the process."

Ravi and Wei face up to five years in prison for invasion of privacy, but one NJ lawyer doesn't believe they'll go. He writes, "New Jersey has a presumption against imprisonment for first offenders convicted of third and fourth degree crimes. That means it is almost impossible for them to go to prison. This is why the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office is doing everything they can to tack on the bias charge." Students at Clementi's high school in Ridgewood will gather for an assembly to help cope with their feelings about his suicide. One student told CBS 2,"I just think it’s about time the school addressed it and I think it will definitely address a lot of the problems we have in our school."

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By Jaya Saxena in News on October 6, 2010 9:47 AM

Comments [rss]

theiliad

id hit that (molly) !

Agent_C

Can't we get any better pictures of these two? I'm sick of looking at these goofy yearbook pictures...

weissman

it would appear that this is another case of a rush tp judgment!!!!

(1) It will be impossible to prove that Ms. Wei or Mr. Ravi actions played any significant role, or any role at all for that matter in Mr. Clmenti's suicide. There could have been numerous other factors that played a mojor role, from his parents, to his violin capability to the person he was romantically involved with.

(2) It looks like most likely the only thing Molly would be guility of is watcing something on the computer, which, she can rightly say, I had no idea what Mr. Ravi was going to play. If the prosecutor wants to persue this they will have to be willing to fisrt identify and the then prosecute anyone that might have seen the feed, if there one was made even for a few seconds.

(3) The prosecuter in this better be real careful that he dosn't end up with another Duke Lacross case on his hands. That one will cost Duke University and Durham County millions of dollars to clear up,a nd its still going on, because of a rush to judgment.

at worst I would epect some type of probabtion for both Mr. Ravi and Ms Wei, as far as explusion-Who knows, they (Rutgers) should be careful of being accused of unlawful expulsion which would open them up to soem return legal action on the part of Mr. Ravi and Ms. Wei.

John L

Invasion of privacy for Ravi - 5 years probation and community service

Criminal facilitation for Wei - 2 years probation and community service

Both should get expelled.

Clementi sadly committed an irrational act that no one could have anticipated.

May he rest in peace.

Sometimes though I get the feeling that the "mystery man' in this case is the one that's getting away with murder here. I don't understand how this man's identity has not been revealed. Surely Rutgers must have some security cameras somewhere or someone, that can provide a description, must have seen him. I don't understand how there isn't more scrutiny over this man's identity. I think he knows exactly why Clementi died, and quite possibly was the cause of the despair that led to his suicide. This case will be incomplete until this man's identity is revealed.

Dogsbody

Intuitively I think it's a good point that no-one seems to be paying much attention to the mystery man in this case. He could be fundamental to determining why Clementi committed suicide.

But on the other hand, if Wei and Ravi are being charged simply with an invasion of privacy (rather than some sort of convoluted manslaughter case), he's kind of an irrelevance. Who the man is, and the nature of his relationship with Clementi has no bearing on Wei & Ravi's case.

kleinpeter

Like my mama always said: "You are the company that you keep."

potsmoker

HEY HE DIDNT PUSH HIM OFF A BRIDGE SO THERE WOULD BE NO CASE EXCEPT 3RD DEGREE EMBARASSMENT OF A CLOSET CASE

Spirit of 76

Yeah, who cares about embarrassment? BTW, what's your real name and address? We'd like to connect all of your obviously non-embarrassing comments to an actual person. A photograph would be nice, too.

potsmoker

Im Mr. T. ROLL, i work at the troll factory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

i dont believe in all the boohaaa bally hoo over seals, whale, dafur and facebook clickivism, nobody cared before and nobody will care after, and you never cared until there awas fa facebook group.

Sketto

If I'm the defense lawyer, I just say, "This is no hate crime. They would've done this stupid thing to anyone." This is the inherent flaw in the concept of hate crime. If I can claim the defendent is just an asshole, then it's not a particular hate.

Spirit of 76

If Ravi had tweeted, "My roommate was doing it in the room last night. Yay," who'd even care? He made a point of mentioning it was "with another guy." That definitely smacks of discrimination.

Guest

So I guess the media covering this should be charged with hate/bias crimes for mentioning the ethnicity of Ravi and Wei. Or maybe the mystery man should be charged for leaving the scene of a crime. I mean, if we're going overboard, let's do it right.

Spirit of 76

The interesting thing is that I've never seen a mention in the media of the ethnicity of either of the accused. Pray tell, where are these descriptions?

Guest

I was being facetious. They mention their names, which is a pretty clear indicator of ethnicity. You said this was a hate or bias crime even though Ravi said "it's with a another guy" instead of "it's with a faggot". One clearly shows hate. The other does not. If we allow ourselves as a society to call the first one hate, then we're quickly sliding down a slippery slope to censorship.

theboneranger

would anyone care if he had said "with a fat girl'? would that be discriminatory?

jt10000

Then the prosecution asks for examples of other incidents against different groups. If there are such examples, then the accused is off the hook for hate crimes. Which is the way it should be. But if the accused mainly did it to one group and not to people similar to him/herself, then the charge is more likely to stick. The facts can help determine it.

Dogsbody

So his only defense against being accused of a hate crime against Clementi is to incriminate himself in the "non-hate" crime of snooping on other people? That doesn't sound right...

ktinnyc

And if I was the prosecutor I'd say, "Ravi wouldn't have tweeted what he did and announced that his roommate was gay and offered people the opportunity to watch if the roommate wasn't gay". I guess that's why we have juries.

Sketto

And lawyers.

theboneranger

This is akin to knowing your roommate is about to have sex with the ugly chick, leaving the room with the blinds open and telling a few buds to go stand outside that window if they want to have a laugh.

Unless i'm wrong, he didn't 'broadcast' it in the sense most people think (like broadcast it out to the general public or groups of people) but he made it so one person at a time could see it through Gchat.

Its horrible that the kid committed suicide, and its horrible that people get bullied for being gay or different, but people need to ice off a bit with a lot of the stories we see in the media and think a little harder.

This is a giant case because of the key words: GAY, SEX, WEBCAM, broadcast, internet, chat, privacy, rutgers, indian, chinese