In my view, a ten year sentence is too harsh for a "crime" whose contours are unclear to this day. Was Ravi homophobic? We don't know. There are mixed signals from the trial on that. While on the one hand he tried to cover up what he had done, on the other, he had also reached out to Clementi when the latter was alive. Rather than incarcerated, Ravi should be made to do community service for a prolonged period, maybe running into years, and he should work in the area of gay rights.
The only problem with that solution, Frank, is that it doesn't account for the potential hate crime aspect of all this. It may be unclear even to Ravi what his motivations were, but his actions ended up in someone's death, and that should not be diminished or dismissed. I'm not in agreement with some of the lynch-mob sentiments I've been hearing from rank-and-file men on the gay message boards I know of. But neither do I think he should get off lightly. Community service is probably a good idea, but the reason emotions are high are because his actions resulted in death; there's no getting around that.
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