Molly Wei, Charged In Tyler Clementi Webcam Suicide, Seeks To Have Record Expunged

HADDONFIELD, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student accused of watching a surreptitious webcast of a classmate's same-sex liaison is seeking to enter an intervention program that could result in the dismissal of invasion of privacy charges. The classmate later committed suicide.

Molly Wei, a 19-year-old from West Windsor, applied to enter the pretrial program last month. If she's accepted, a judge could set conditions, such as staying out of legal trouble, doing community service and maintaining a job or attending school.

If she meets those conditions for a specified time period – it could be up to three years, though one year is typical – the charges would be dropped.

Wei is charged with two counts of invasion of privacy and could receive a five-year prison sentence if she's convicted. Such a long sentence would be unusual for a first-time offender.

Prosecutors see her as the lesser suspect in an alleged crime that's linked to a tragedy.

Tyler Clementi committed suicide by jumping from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, hours after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, allegedly tried to watch a second encounter between Clementi and a man via webcam from Wei's computer.

Clementi's death sparked national conversations about bullying and suicides by young gays and lesbians.

Ravi was indicted last week on 15 counts. The most serious charge was bias intimidation, which alleges he acted because Clementi was gay. A conviction could mean he'd spend up to 10 years in prison on that charge alone.

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan has said that Wei's case is not planned to be presented to a grand jury. That could indicate that either a plea deal is being struck or she's heading for the pretrial intervention program.

It's common for people who do not have criminal records and are accused of low-level crimes to apply for the program. The applications are not considered public records.

She could be accepted if the Middlesex County prosecutor's office and pretrial intervention program officials agree. She would also need a judge's approval to enter the program.

Her application was first reported by The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick.

Her lawyer, Rubin Sinins would not comment on the case but did not dispute the report.

James O'Neill, a spokesman for the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office, said that Wei's case remains active but would not comment further.

Wei and Ravi both left Rutgers soon after they were charged.

Comments

[Upside]

06:29 PM on 04/30/2011

Perhaps she will one day have a child who is gay and realize the full impact of her actions.

Then again, probably not.

[Cronous]

07:20 PM on 04/30/2011

What exactly were actions? I don't think she did anything but passively watch.

[spoonbill1963]

10:24 AM on 04/30/2011

She's a murder.
End of story.

[MMRDO]

11:53 AM on 05/01/2011

I don't think that was her intent, she was reckless, but you couldn't get a murder case out of this.

[OB-GYN]

09:26 AM on 04/30/2011

We just don't know the facts of her involvement, so prejudice is uncalled for.

My condolences to the Clementi family for their son's loss.

[atexasdem]

01:28 AM on 04/30/2011

Doesn't someone have to actually be convicted of a crime before the record of the crime can be purged? Seems to me that she's jumping the gun so to speak.

[black series]

01:02 AM on 04/30/2011

This BS is overblown.

[fridakahlofan]

10:34 AM on 05/02/2011

The family and friends of Tyler Clementi don't think so.
She should spend some time in jail to think about the ramifications of being a passive watcher of this crime.

[ArzoWardak]

06:16 PM on 04/29/2011

This is just an insult to the victim and his poor family. I can't believe she has the audacity to do this. But even if she did get her record expunged, she'd still never be able to run away from it. This received national attention. And people will remember this tragic case for a very long time. She can't escape that.

[FPhoebe]

12:15 PM on 04/30/2011

A quick google search will show any potential college or employer her past actions.

[MarcEdward]

11:06 AM on 05/01/2011

Which I am very happy about.

[dennissinned]

02:53 PM on 04/29/2011

It's not clear whether she was a party to this at all. It may have been that her webcam was used without her knowledge.

[Just a passerby]

06:53 PM on 04/29/2011

I'm not sure, but I believe she did know what was going on and helped Ravi. Otherwise she would've been an outraged witness for the prosecution.

[realpragmatist]

02:35 PM on 04/29/2011

I meant let us NOT condemn them off-hand.

The typo was my unintended consequence ;-)

[MarcEdward]

03:55 PM on 04/29/2011

I don't they are being condemned off hand,
I think they are being condemned for what they did.
They won't go to prison, the only suffering will be to their reputation, and that is well earned.
Molly is whining because people know exactly the sort of person she is.

[realpragmatist]

02:33 PM on 04/29/2011

As I said before the suicide is most likely the unintended consequence of two naive (or should I say one naive) 18-year old, We do not even know how much this kid knew.

Let us condemn them and be a little careful after the Duke case.

We cannot get that wonderful lost life back but why get emotional and spoil two other promising young lives? Do you think these two would have dared to do anything if they had realized the outcome?

Where did this lynching mentalist in this great country come from?

Peace.

[Just a passerby]

06:57 PM on 04/29/2011

I think you're waaaaay overstating here. There is NO "lynching" being proposed or supported. Instead, people are saying she should be held responsible for her actions. And I agree, since she was an adult when she engaged in the behavior.

You don't help a case when you use over-the-top words. You also don't help it when you apply a double-standard. Ravi and Wei are "promising young lives"? OK, that's an appeal to emotion. And yet you then tell us not to get emotional.

Pick one and stick with it.

[realpragmatist]

12:42 AM on 04/30/2011

OK, I am sorry that I use the word "lynching". I honestly believe that at that age, people do silly things without understanding the consequence of their actions. I am just saying that we have to be careful before making it political and a hate crime and throwing him/them into prison. If we do that, how are we, as older people, more responsible and compassionate than their naive actions?

And I do believe that any young person that age has great potential an is a promising young life.

I fully understand the justifiable anger that the parents and dear near ones of the kid who committed suicide feel. If they talk like this, it is fully understandable.

Anyway, everything that happened is so sad that I do not know what the solution is. I really wish something had happened, someone saw and intervened to save that young man's life. The shame that he must have felt to take his young life - is incredibly sad - I fully understand. And the never ending grief of his family.

But still how is their naive action equivalent to directly killing him? I am sure that these two did not directly or indirectly mean for him to die. It is a terrible loss and sad all around.

[anitaj]

01:57 PM on 04/29/2011

She was perfectly OK with depriving Mr. Clementi of his privacy.

There is no reason why her actions should not be part of the public record.

[MrUnlimited]

04:56 PM on 05/01/2011

Getting her record expunged won't eliminate her actions from the public record. A simple Google search by all of her future potential employers will unearth all of the news reports about Tyler Clementi's suicide and her role in it.

[Richcrafter]

01:45 PM on 04/29/2011

No way! Crazy psychopath.

[spoonbill1963]

01:13 PM on 04/29/2011

This person has some real nerve.

[denicci1977]

12:43 PM on 04/29/2011

She thought it was funny then. Not so funny when you are looking at time behind bars. It needs to stay on her record so she will never forget the impact of her actions.

[MarcEdward]

03:55 PM on 04/29/2011

ITA

[MrUnlimited]

04:59 PM on 05/01/2011

How I feel about her efforts to expunge her record aside for a moment...

do you really think that she'll forget the impact of her actions if her record is expunged? Besides the fact that someone is DEAD as a result of this ordeal (a consequence that's fairly difficult to 'forget'), there's the reality that expunging one's public record isn't akin to hiding all evidence of transgressions from Google searches.

[Gjorg]

12:18 PM on 04/29/2011

What she did was very very stupid and incredibly cruel but she had no idea that the outcome would be suicide. I think we have all done something stupid as a teen although ours probably did not end so tragically. If being a cruel vicious little bit@h were a crime how many teens would be in jail today. Remember "Mean girls"?

[KenKo]

01:03 PM on 04/29/2011

So it's excusable because she's a teen...sorta? She was mature enough to get into college, and thought she was mature enough to be part of a cruel joke on a fellow classmate, and why? Because Tyler was gay...and hey, we all know gays should be targets of jokes, right? So what if one sensitive gay took it very seriously? We are all entitled to a laugh at his expense and have a good chuckle with other "mature" classmates and have a beer afterwards, right? Guess what....not a chance in hell will this be forgotten. If she thought she was mature enough to go to college and be an adult, she can damn well learn to take her responsibilities as an adult.

[MrUnlimited]

05:03 PM on 05/01/2011

Molly should be punished. With that being said...

I think that Gjorg's main point was that Molly probably wouldn't have been so cruel if she had known that it'd lead to someone's death. She and Ravi were VERY VERY VERY stupid and careless in their actions, but Gjorg seems to be taking issue with the way that some posters ascribe murderous tendencies to Molly solely due to the consequences of her actions and fail to take into account the stupidity, myopia, and egocentrism of people in her age group. What in Molly's life justifies the belief that she'd be a willful accomplice to the death of a fellow student?

[spoonbill1963]

01:14 PM on 04/29/2011

Didn't you also take Jack the Rippers side?

[Catherine Lynch Monks]

11:22 AM on 04/29/2011

She doesn't deserve any more mercy than she showed Tyler. The only small consolation is that she's unemployable right now so getting and maintaining a job to adhere to the programs requirements will be almost impossible.

[FPhoebe]

12:17 PM on 04/30/2011

And I doubt any college would take her.