An appellate court overturned the bias convictions against Dharun Ravi on Friday and ordered a new trial. Watch video
NEWARK -- Legal experts agree the appellate court had no choice but to reverse the convictions of an ex-Rutgers student in the Tyler Clementi case and order a new trial after the state's highest court struck down part of the bias law used to convict him.
The portion of the law in question required jurors to look at the victim's state of mind -- as opposed to the intent and state of mind of the person accused of the crime.
The appellate decision arrived four years after Dharun Ravi's conviction on several counts of bias intimidation and other charges following a highly publicized trial in New Brunswick which put a national spotlight on cyber bullying.
Seton Hall law professor John Kip Cornwell said the appellate court's ruling hinged on the state Supreme Court's 2015 decision in a separate case that found part of the state's anti-bias statute unconstitutional.
"They just couldn't extricate those (bias) charges from others from the evidence that the jury weighed in reaching the verdict that it did," Cornwell said. "It was more prejudicial than probative."
Clementi, of Ridgewood, who was Ravi's dorm mate at Rutgers University when the two were freshmen, jumped off the George Washington Bridge several days after the bullying incidents in September 2010 in which Ravi set up a remote webcam that spied on Clementi while he was having an intimate encounter with another man.
"Tyler's private moments were stolen from him and used to humiliate him," the Clementi family said in a statement. "His life was forever affected and the lives of those who knew and loved him have been forever changed."
Ravi was not charged in Clementi's death and his defense maintained the webcam incidents had nothing to do with Clementi's decision to commit suicide. He was sentenced -- and has already served -- his 30-day sentence, three years of probation and 300 hours of community service.
The appellate court, in its decision, ordered a new trial saying Ravi could not have received a fair trial as the bias evidence "permeated the trial."
Miles Feinstein, a criminal defense attorney and a past president of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said it was "common sense" the appellate court would order a new trial because the evidence presented resulted in "irreparable prejudice."
"It was polluted by the great weight of the bias testimony, which was devastating to the defendant," he said.
Robert Bianchi, the former Morris County prosecutor and a current defense attorney, said the evidence presented about the victim's state of mind "poisoned the conviction."
"It's a very, very tricky area of law that prosecutors should generally stay away from," Bianchi said.
State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-19), who sponsored the anti-bias law at the heart of the case, said he's looking to fix the law "to comport with what the Supreme Court declared in 2015" and believes Dharun Ravi's other convictions -- on invasion of privacy and witness and evidence tampering -- should have been upheld.
"Everyone knows he tampered with evidence," Vitale said. "Everyone knows he tampered with witnesses. Everyone knows he invaded his privacy not once but tried to do it again. You don't do something twice and call it a mistake. He did all those things and whether he was motivated by bias or not is irrelevant. He shouldn't get away scot-free on this."
He continued: "The underlying crimes should not have been affected by the bias evidence. All of those acts took place whether they were motivated by bias or not."
Bianchi, the former prosecutor, said the challenge of this type of evidence is that it can generate tremendous sympathy for the victim so it can "unduly prejudice" the jury, and the defendant can't cross examine the victim's state of mind -- both of which create significant problems for the prosecution on appeal.
"Trials aren't about feeling bad for people," Bianchi said. "They're about examinable proofs. Not prejudice, passion, bias or sympathy."
It's important for prosecutors to win convictions and make sure "they're sustainable through the appellate process because the prosecution's case never gets better on retrial after a reversal on appeal," he said.
Ravi's attorney Steven Alterman has said the prosecution now has 20 days to decide whether or not to appeal to the state Supreme Court. Depending on what the prosecution decides, he said, it will then be a matter of whether "we can work something out in a mutually acceptable way."
The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office hasn't commented as to whether it'll appeal the appellate decision.
Justin Zaremba may be reached at jzaremba@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinZarembaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.