Dharun Ravi, after being accused of a hate crime for allegedly setting up a webcam to spy on the same-sex encounter of his college roommate, is learning that it's not only what you post on twitter that can get you in trouble, but also what you delete.
Ravi, the roommate of Tyler Clementi, has been accused of using the soil tool Twitter to publicly exploit Clementi's most private moments. He was charged with numerous counts of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy. But what was just as eye-opening were the charges Ravi acquired after tampering with evidence that resulted after he attempted to delete text messages and a Twitter post that initially got him in trouble.
It's new age story of taking old-school evidence-tampering charges into a digital era of social media and cyberspace, said Bradley S. Shear, an attorney who advises clients about social media and intellectual property law.
"It can help demonstrate that your virtual behavior, online activities, are just as important, if not more so, than everything you do in your everyday life," he added.
19-year old Ravi, along with another student, Molly Wei, were both charged with invasion of privacy for actions that occurred in the days leading up to September suicide of Tyler Clementi in which he jumped off the George Washington bridge.
Case officials claimed Ravi used Wei's computer in her room to activate the computer in his room using Skype. They were then able to breech Clementi and another man's private moments. Ravi has been accused of attempting the same action a few days later by inviting others to view the webcast.
The death of Tyler Clementi was amidst a flurry of gay teenagers committing suicide after facing social scrutiny among peers. The news quickly galvanized efforts nationwide by gay rights activists to battle suicide and the bullying of young gays.
Just last week a grand jury indicted Ravi on additional charges, including bias intimidation and evidence tampering.
Messages left on the answering machine of Ravi's attorney, Steven Altman, were not returned.
Prosecutors and Pittsburgh business lawyers involved in at least one other case in the U.S. have argued that a defendant's actions to delete his social-media postings concluded to be considered evidence tampering.
A former member of the Air Force accused of killing his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter was charged with evidence tampering. Authorities said he asked his father to omit his Facebook, MySpace and email accounts in an effort to try to conceal potential evidence.
Prosecutors ultimately dropped Jerimie Hicks' charges, saying they did not believe the charges could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Hicks faced charges of deliberate homicide and a different evidence-tampering solicitation charge involving a bloody uniform. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
The different result of each case's evidence tampering charges can be distinguished by defining the law. Evidence tampering entails proving someone didn't just try to rid the evident, but rather destroyed evidence, Pittsburgh intellectual property lawyers say.
"It's fairly routine that until they become suspects, people are deleting electronic files," said Orin Kerr, a Law School professor at George Washington University. "It's an understandable impulse to take it down."
But Kerr also said that intent is the key to crime.
"If someone deletes information because they don't want it to be a news story, that's different than trying to keep police from arresting them," Kerr said.
Alleged harassment of Clementi and the charges put against his roommate will serve the case's top attorneys as basis for many of both roommates' own words from their social-media postings.
For matters involving Clementi, his words provide insight into his mindset before committing suicide. In the case of Ravi, his words will be used against him in court, as well as the evidence he tried to erase.
"The evidence of this case has made the investigations very interesting." said one Boston intellectual property lawyer looking into the case.
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