Webcam spying convict Dharun Ravi apologizes.
May 30 New York: Former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi, convicted of spying on his gay roommate who later committed suicide, has publicly apologised for the first time for his “insensitive and immature” actions, saying he will surrender this week to begin his month-long jail term.
Dharun Ravi, 20, issued the public statement two days before he begins a 30-day jail term after being convicted of intimidating Tyler Clementi and invading his privacy in the day’s before Clementi killed himself.
The 18-year-old threw himself off the George Washington Bridge in September 2010 after Ravi, his room mate at Rutgers university, spied on him with another man and tweeted about what he saw.
Ravi said he regretted his “stupid and childish” choices.
“I accept responsibility for and regret my thoughtless, insensitive, immature, stupid and childish choices that I made on September 19, 2010 and September 21, 2010,” he said. “My behavior and actions, which at no time were motivated by hate, bigotry, prejudice or desire to hurt, humiliate or embarrass anyone, were nonetheless the wrong choices and decisions. I apologize to everyone affected by those choices.”
Last week, a judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail beginning May 31. Because the sentence is less than a year, it decreases the chances that federal immigration authorities will seek to have Ravi deported to India, where he was born and remains a citizen.
Prosecutors, finding the sentence too lenient, said they would appeal.
Ravi’s lawyers have said they expect to appeal the convictions entirely. They say that he was not hateful and that authorities charged him with such serious crimes because of Clementi’s suicide even though he was not charged with the 18-year-old’s death.
When Ravi was sentenced last month, Judge Glenn Berman chastised him for not apologising for his actions.
“I heard this jury say ‘guilty’ 288 times,” Berman said, referring to all the sub-parts of the charges Ravi faced repeated 12 times, once for each juror. “And I haven’t heard you apologise once.”
During the court proceeding, Ravi, who expressed remorse in March in a newspaper interview, chose not to address the judge, though he cried as his mother pleaded for mercy from the judge.
News Gathered by India News
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