Hate Crime Research: Case And Death Of Tyler Clement

Hate Crime
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Hate Crime
It was on the 22nd day of September 2010, when an 18 year old American student, Tyler Clementi, at the Rutgers University took his life. He jumped off the George Washington Bridge after he realized that his roommate Dharun Ravi and hall mate Molly Wei secretly viewed an incidence where Tyler was kissing another man in the room (O'Brien, 2015).
Explain whether or not Tyler Clementi’s constitutional right to privacy was violated
While Ravi and Molly took it upon themselves to spy through the webcam in the room where Tyler had been with his friend. This is the first stage that shows they were intent on spying on their friend in the room. Later on, Ravi is seen to post the same online and promising for there to be a broadcast which would be showing Tyler and his friend having intimate moments. While the video did not broadcast, there is a clear intent that is tied to the motive of Ravi and Molly (Rosen, 2010). They planned on making sure that the entire list on their social media platforms and specifically twitter would be able to see the intimate moment of the victim. Ironically, all of this was happening without the consent of the victim. This amounts to breaching privacy of the victim (Taylor, Fritsch & Liederbach, 2015). Ravi and Molly with intent planned and spied on Tyler without his consent, which amounts to violating the privacy of the victim (Rosen, 2010). By sharing the information online further violates the privacy of the victim, as they shared sensitive information that was incriminating and was used with the intent to intimidate, playfully or otherwise (O'Brien, 2015).
Explain whether the offense should be considered cyber-hate or classified as a hate crime
The crime that Ravi committed can be described as a hate crime. This is relative to the fact that, it was motivated towards showing the followers that Tyler was gay (Bader, 2012). It was a way of proving a point to the followers ("Anarchy and Hate on the World Wide Web"). Even in the tweet that he sent out, which would be followed by a video, his intensions were geared towards making sure that the rest of the viewer’s knew that Tyler was gay (Rosen, 2010). This is a rather common approach assoc...