Posted on 09/30/2010 11:28:41 AM PDT by Dr. Scarpetta
Gov. Chris Christie today called the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi an “unspeakable tragedy,” but said he would let Attorney General Paula Dow figure out how to prosecute the case against two fellow students accused of recording him in a sexual encounter.
“Well, first of all, as the father of a 17-year-old, I can’t imagine what those parents are feeling today – I can’t,” said Christie.
“You send your son to school to get an education with great hopes and aspirations.
Christie said his feeling on the case as a father “overwhelms whatever feelings I have as governor” and that he didn’t know how Ravi and Wei could sleep at night “knowing that they contributed to driving that young man to that alternative.”
The two have been charged with multiple counts of invasion of privacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Exactly. Can you imagine what must have come over this young fella when he knew what happened to him? To me it sounds like he kept his private life to himself and these two exploited that fact. It’s sad and I grieve for his family...
Also can you imagine what the person he was with is going through now as well? This vile act upon his privacy has hurt a lot of people and wheter or not they knew he might react as he did...it was STILL NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS AND HAD NO RIGHT TO DO THIS TO HIM OR ANYONE ELSE.
I have two sons in college, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for his family to get the phone call from the police or the college, telling them that their son was dead. May God help them.
So if I fire a person, and they wind up killing themselves because of it, should I be held liable? After all, lots of people kill themselves after they lose their jobs.
It is for the jury to decide, that’s why I said ‘charge’ not convict.
On that I would agree.
Bad analogy. Your firing them was not committing a crime against them.
I understand your point, but it is not comparable to this situation. Firing a person is a lawful activity; releasing a video in this manner is unlawful. The crime creates the liability.
There have been numerous examples of bullying that resulted in suicide. Who is to judge will this person can take bullying and that one can’t.
That is no excuse, this is absolutely disgusting
As for stretching analogies, my jihadi imam analogy is actually probably closer than your liquor store owner heart attack analogy for one simple reason: personal choice. If a liquor store owner has a heart attack while being robbed, it may or may not be directly caused by the robbery but either way it was not an action chosen by the liquor store owner. The suicide by the bullying victim, just like the shooting rampage of my hypothetical jihadi imam, was an action entirely of that person's choice in response to the respective instigating incident.
You are right, these kids had no right to invade his privacy.
But the victim had no right to take his life over this. God created his life and only God has the right to take it.
Yes the committed a crime, no argument there. All I’m saying is that the punishment should be the same, regardless of the resultant action the victim took. They violated his privacy, period. In the end it was still his choice to take his own life. In your earlier analogy, the guy didn’t make the choice to have a heart attack.
Letting someone go for business reasons and purposely humiliating them for no good reason other than a cheap laugh and shot at youtube fame are two different things IMO.
I agree with you. There is a lot of emotionalism being injected here. But law should deal with FACTS, not emotions.
Of course. And these punks should get the same punishment regardless of whether or not this kid killed himself. And while on an emotional level, we can believe their actions contributed to his mental state that resulted in his decision to take his own life, I cannot see how in a Court of Law, where facts should outweigh emotion that could hold up.
What has come out about this case to date hardly falls into the category of systemic bullying... trying to turn it into that with the evidence to date is just idiotic and foolish.
The crime creates only the liabilities specified in the statute. It does not then create a liability for anything the victim may or may not do as a result of being victimized. While some of my analogies are deliberately somewhat hyperbolic, the stretch between saying these punks should be charged with manslaughter for "causing" this boy's suicide is not quite so far from the claim that US foreign policy was the cause of the 9/11 WTC and Pentagon attacks as would first appear.
Difference: he chose to jump off the bridge, nobody forced him to and it wasn’t a surprise to him. A tragedy, yes; manslaughter, no.
It seems that mechanism that should be in place to tell a person to not do something because it is morally wrong is missing.
It was bad enough to put him on video but to put it on the web. I don’t care about his sexual preference. Even most heteros would be totally mortified.
Obviously these teens were not ready to be on their own yet. I couldn’t even defend my own child for doing a stunt like this.
They probably didn’t know he would kill himself. They are now finding out that actions can have deadly consequences. Too bad they weren’t taught that earlier.
No comfort to the poor young man and his family.
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