Dharun Ravi on Monday was sentenced to
30 days in jail for bullying roommate Tyler Clementi.
Ravi was instructed by Judge Glen
Berman to report to the Middlesex County Adult Correctional facility
on May 31.
The 20-year-old Ravi was convicted in
March of 15 criminal counts, including invading the Rutgers
University freshman's privacy and tampering with evidence.
Eighteen-year-old Clementi jumped off
the George Washington Bridge to his death in the fall of 2010 after
learning that Ravi, his roommate, had secretly streamed live video of
him having sex with another man onto the Internet.
Prosecutors charged that Ravi attempted
to deceive them by destroying evidence of his participation,
including a Twitter feed in which he allegedly twice invited
followers to watch his roommate's sexual encounters on the Internet.
A day after Ravi's tweets, Clementi, a
gifted violinist, wrote on his Facebook page, “Jumping off the gw
bridge sorry.”
Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden
State Equality, New Jersey's largest gay rights advocate, said in a
statement that his group was opposed to giving Ravi the maximum
sentence of 10 years in jail but lamented today's ruling.
“This was not merely a childhood
prank gone awry,” Goldstein said. “This was not a crime without
bias.”
“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.”